


Slide on over and forget it's wrong

by linaerys



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-18
Updated: 2012-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-12 09:53:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 34,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/489568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linaerys/pseuds/linaerys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another alpha comes to town. Stiles is Stiles and Derek is terrible at life. An AU S2 that diverges from the end of S1. Jackson is a werewolf and there are other changes as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to no_detective and rhiannonhero for betaing and to corbae and scribblinlenore for cheerleading. I could not have done it without your help and encouragement. The title is from Bonnie Raitt's "Two Lights in the Nighttime".

The heat wave in early May shuts down the school and leaves Stiles at loose ends. With Allison’s terrifying grandfather missing—visiting relatives, her parents say, but Allison says she doesn’t trust either of them—and the temperature above a hundred every day, there’s nothing to do except lie under a fan, eating ice cubes.

Of course, Stiles can only do that for about an hour before it loses its charm, so he calls up Scott, probably interrupting him mid-coitus, but Stiles is irritated enough at the heat not to care, and invites Scott and anyone else he wants to bring out to the swimming hole. 

Not that Scott’s just going to call up Derek or something and invite him. Not that Stiles wants him to. Although he does wonder if Derek ever just lets himself have fun.

A stream cuts through the forest about a mile away from the Hale house, widening into a pool under a grove of cypresses. Usually it would be crowded on a day like today, but Stiles has an idea—which turns out to be correct—that the animal attacks and dismembered people in the woods will make most of the students stay away. 

Scott and Allison arrive a few minutes after Stiles does. Allison has even brought a picnic basket. Stiles wonders how she swung that without her parents figuring out what was going on.

“Told my mom I was meeting Lydia and Boyd. They haven’t figured out Boyd yet, so it’s good.” Stiles pauses in taking off his socks and Allison winces a little. “Sorry, Stiles. You know...”

“I know,” says Stiles. “She’s into first line lacrosse players.”

“And pissing her mom off,” says Allison.

“I could probably manage that,” says Stiles.

Allison smiles adorably and shakes her head. “I don’t think you could.”

Sure, fine, he hangs out with _werewolves_ , but apparently that’s not scary enough. 

The water’s chilly when he gets in, even with the weather they’re having, and feels so nice that for a moment he stops thinking about Lydia. It’s not hard to relax when it’s this hot out. And nothing creepy has happened for a few weeks. Which is boring, but nice.

“Oh look, trespassers,” says a voice above where Stiles is floating. He opens his eyes. Isaac and Erica stand above the pool. Isaac dislodges a rock with his foot that plops into the water a few feet from Stiles’s head.

Isaac shrugs. “Oops.”

Stiles paddles away from the cliff so he can look up at them more easily and his head is no longer in the trajectory of rocks Isaac’s pushing off. “Isn’t it a little hot for all that leather?”

Erica jerks her chin at him, threatening and sexy. It’s been a little while since she ripped the alternator out of his car, right?

“You couldn’t tell they were coming?” Stiles asks Scott. Since Scott decided to be a member of the pack, shouldn’t he have some special wolfy sense about them?

Scott shrugs. “I was distracted.” Behind him, Allison blushes.

“Come on,” Stiles shouts up to the leather twins. “Can’t we share?”

Erica hesitates for a moment. “This pool is ours.”

“Where’s Boyd?” Allison asks. Erica and Isaac look uncomfortable. She might as well have asked _where’s the only one of you we like and who could maybe take us_.

Isaac shrugs. “He went up to Portland to visit his mom,” he says. Erica elbows him.

“Come on in, the water’s great,” says Stiles. This is not going to devolve into some stupid Sharks and Jets thing. It’s too hot out. 

Erica and Isaac exchange looks one more time and then start stripping. Stiles totally doesn’t look when Erica takes off her shirt. Except maybe a little bit out of the corner of his eye—he’s always liked girls who seem like they could beat him up.

Erica’s down to black underwear and a wife-beater over her red bra before she cannonballs in, dunking Stiles and splashing Allison and Scott where they sit in the shade-covered shallow end, making out. Stiles sputters when he comes up and brushes the water out of his face. Allison and Scott wipe droplets from each others’ skin and resume their soft little kisses.

Stiles swallows and looks away. He would really like to be making out with someone. He’s getting less picky, which is maybe not so attractive, but fuck it. It seems like everyone is getting action except him. Even Danny has that boyfriend from the next town over. He _should_ have it worse, since there aren’t any other out guys at school.

Erica and Isaac fight under the little waterfall that feeds the pool. It looks like fun, but a little rough if you’re not a werewolf. When they’ve finished that little dominance display, Erica floats over to Stiles. “Hey,” she says.

Okay, this is totally cool, and Stiles is totally over the damage she did to his car. He’s sure he’s about to say something winning when Derek shows up. At least _he_ was smart enough to leave the leather behind. He’s wearing a white t-shirt that Stiles can totally see his happy trail through and really well-fitting black jeans. Which if Stiles is very lucky, Derek might take off to go swimming. 

“You’re supposed to be guarding the perimeter,” Derek says to at Erica and Isaac, with the usual undercurrent of fury in his voice. He looks awfully pale considering the nice weather they’ve been having and the fact that he doesn’t seem to have anything else to do other than sunbathe. It’s not like Derek is hanging out in the library. Or is he? Or do werewolves not tan? Does it interfere with his whole creature-of-the-night thing?

Isaac hides behind Erica’s shoulder, lower in the water. He looks pale too. Derek should be treating his pack better.

“You’re supposed to be giving us a break, remember?” Erica calls back. 

“Come on, Derek,” says Stiles, from the safety of the pool. “It’s too hot to make everyone prowl around in leather. You could come in and cool off.” Derek glares at him. “Or not.” 

He thinks maybe he’s staring at Derek so he looks away. Then he doesn’t know where to look. Examining the crumbling stone of the pool’s bank doesn’t seem quite right. He looks up at Derek again. He’s not scared of Derek, not anymore; it’s just that when Derek’s in a room, or anywhere really, a large percentage of Stiles’s awareness is focused on him. 

“Yeah, come on Derek,” says Erica. She stands up so her, um, torso, is out of the water, the thin fabric of her tank top clinging to her in all kinds of ways. “The water is wonderful.” She shakes her hair out, while Stiles looks back and forth between them. He wonders if Erica is one of the perks of being alpha. Derek looks annoyed. Maybe not. Some people have no idea how good they have it.

“Out, now,” says Derek. “All of you. This is Hale property.”

“Actually,” says Stiles, “the stream is the property border, so technically...” Derek glares at him and Stiles swallows before continuing at a lower volume. “Technically, it’s not.” He rubs his head. “Not that it matters if you want to get all…” He gestures at Derek who’s doing that whole pissy, hulking thing.

Derek holds his gaze. This is probably some sort of werewolf dominance thing, and Stiles is supposed to acknowledge that the guy with the literal claws is the one who’s going to win this one. Derek’s nostrils flare and he whirls around, looking up into the woods. When he turns back, his face has gone pointy and wolfy, hair standing up and claws extended. That’s not because of Stiles.

Something passes like a ripple through Isaac, then Erica, and finally Scott, raising fur and claws on their bodies. Allison reaches behind her and pulls out her bow. Scott stands in front of her as if to protect her.

“What? What is it?” Stiles asks.

Isaac and Erica whirl on him, claws extended. Oh shit. Stiles dives under the water and emerges under the waterfall. That confuses them for a moment, but they zero on him quickly and lunge toward him again. They’re faster and more agile than the last time Stiles saw them transform. Ducking under sheets of water won’t save him for long. 

Erica grabs him, her claws about to break skin when Derek lands between them with a splash that knocks Stiles over. He flings Erica and Isaac out of the water. When they land they shake themselves out like wet dogs, which would be hilarious if this whole situation weren’t terrifying. “I thought they were under control,” says Stiles. Derek pushes Stiles behind him with an arm over Stiles’s chest, interposing himself between Stiles and his wayward pack.

Derek’s claws retract, and he looks at his hand for a moment. Stiles realizes he’s kind of clinging to Derek, and furthermore, Derek’s t-shirt has gone totally transparent. 

“I’m fine,” says Stiles, backing away until he’s pressed up against the cliff behind the waterfall. “Thanks for the save—from your—I don’t know what just happened. Do you know what just happened? ‘Cause I think—”

Derek steps toward him, and Stiles stops talking, mouth half open. Then Derek lifts him up and puts him on the bank far more gently than he flung his wolves.

“There’s an ash grove over the hill,” Derek says. “You’ll be safe there. _Run_.”

Stiles does what he’s told, stumbling in bare feet. His wet bathing suit binds uncomfortably as he runs, but he hears the lope of Erica and Isaac behind him, and it isn’t worth it to stop before he reaches the grove. It could feel peaceful on another day, with the canopy of branches above him. Now it just seems like there’s too much space between the trees. Mountain ash has wide-spreading branches and red berries. Ash trees are sometimes known as Rowan with red berries that can be worn as a charm against fairies, witches and werewolves. If he doesn’t see any fairies, does that mean it worked? 

Walls made of ash—that’s what he needs. Maybe redo his whole room in ash and never leave. No, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Thank you, Mr. Harris. Of course, he was talking about his suspicions that Stiles had cheated on a test, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t right. Like right now, Stiles doesn’t even know if the ash grove will really keep the werewolves out. 

Until Isaac comes running up to the edge of the grove and is thrown back by some kind of invisible force-field. “Cool,” says Stiles to himself. He totally should redo his bedroom in ash. Well, except then Scott couldn’t come into it. Or Erica, and does he really want to limit his dating pool like that?

She comes crashing into the barrier next. They pace the perimeter and snarl at him. Now that Stiles isn’t scared for his life, this is kind of funny. “It’s the roots, isn’t it? You can’t get past them.”

“Come out,” calls Erica, her voice something between a coo and a growl.

“No thanks, I like it just fine in here,” says Stiles. He knocks on the trunk of one of the trees for evidence. Erica and Isaac don’t reply. “Hey, what’s this about? I know you don’t like me, but usually you don’t wolf out on—”

“ _He_ likes you better,” says Isaac. “He wishes you were his wolf.”

Oh. That’s something Stiles can’t deal with right now, so he files it away to think about it later. Erica and Isaac continue pacing back and forth, growling occasionally. 

A howl sounds out over the forest, chilling Stiles’s blood. It’s Derek’s howl, but it doesn’t sound like Stiles has been used to hearing on past full moon nights. Something’s not right—this howl sounds like it’s being ripped from him.

Erica and Isaac howl in answer, and run after the sound, loping on all fours until they’re out of sight.

Stiles stays in the grove waiting and listening. The sun dries his skin and his bathing suit, and then makes him sweat even though he’s mostly naked and not exerting himself at all. Fuck this heat wave. 

He sort of hopes Derek will come back to tell him everything was okay. Derek likes him. Better. Isaac’s jealous. Derek is crazy and dangerous and violent and not okay and also so hot that sometimes Stiles can’t look directly at him and he likes Stiles better than Isaac. Maybe better than Erica too.

The sun falls below the horizon, turning the woods from gold to blue, and Stiles finally decides he’s probably out of danger. And Derek’s not much on follow-through. Stiles is cold and dirty when he gets back to the swimming hole, collects his clothes, and climbs into to his Jeep. 

Derek’s not there either, and the woods are getting dark and creepy. There’s no sign of Allison, and his phone’s battery is dead. Scott can just run home. Stiles yells for Allison a few times, waiting for her voice as the echoes die out. Nothing. Not even bird-calls. 

He drives home slowly, scanning the road’s shoulder for her or Scott. 

Once Stiles gets home, he plugs in his phone and finds a series of increasingly worried texts from Allison. He calls her back while digging through the fridge for some dinner. His stomach’s suddenly aware that he went all day without eating. 

She picks up on the first ring. “What _happened_?” Stiles asks, after they’ve ascertained that they’re both okay.

“I don’t know,” says Allison. She pauses, and Stiles pictures her chewing on her thumbnail. “One moment Scott was fine, next moment he got all… _wolf_ \--” she says it kind of nervously, which Stiles stores away for later “—and then he just took off.”

“I’m sure he’s fine. For now. It was probably some sort of pack thing,” says Stiles, which is true as far as it goes. Scott is probably fine. What it means for the pack’s humans is hard to figure.

They talk for a few more minutes without really resolving anything. Stiles sleeps poorly that night, dreaming of running through the woods with creatures after him, or maybe he’s one of the creatures, and when they catch him, they all have Derek’s eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

“Oh man,” says Scott, when Stiles catches up with him in school on Monday. The air-conditioning is fixed but sounds labored. Maybe there’s some magic he and Scott can work on it to shut it down and get another couple days off. Scott looks even more ruffled and out of it than usual. “That was totally weird.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” says Stiles, leaning up against Scott’s locker, watching out of the corner of his eye to check Scott for signs of imminent wolfiness. Last time Scott was out of control, he tried to kill Stiles in the boys’ locker room. And now there are four brand new wolves, give or take, any of whom could apparently go nuclear at any time. 

“You guys just—kaboom.” Stiles makes an exploding gesture with his hands. He rubs the back of his head. “I’ve got these bruises...” He doesn’t finish the thought, though, because ever since Scott went werewolf, he’s annoyingly casual about people’s injuries, his own, and Stiles’s too. “So what happened?”

“I don’t know. We just sort of woke up in a pile in the woods. Jackson was there too, which was kind of weird. I thought he’d decided to go it alone.” He scratches behind his ear. “I don’t really remember what happened.” He seems irritatingly unfazed.

“Well _I_ remember a bunch of—” Stiles drops his voice “—wolves trying to kill me, so...”

“You’re okay now, though,” says Scott. 

“Well, yes, Derek changed back and helped me get away.”

“Huh, that’s funny. He woke up with the rest of us.” Scott shrugs and smiles brightly at him. “I actually did my Chem homework this weekend.”

That doesn’t bode well, since Stiles didn’t help him with it. Maybe his mom did. She should remember some chemistry if she’s a nurse, right?

***

Stiles doesn’t realize how scarce Derek’s made himself until he notices that he hasn’t seen Derek lurking around the high school, waiting to tell Scott some wolfy business. He hasn’t randomly seen Derek around town. And Isaac and Erica are going around school looking all hangdog.

Hah, hangdog, he’s going to have to remember that. 

Stiles braves talking to Boyd even though Lydia is all over him in the lunch room that day. He doesn’t like it, but he does have to admit that Boyd is a big improvement over Jackson, if she had to date a werewolf-lacrosse player. 

Maybe Stiles should have taken the bite.

“Hey, Boyd,” he says, waiting until Lydia stops whispering in Boyd’s ear.

“Hey, Stiles.” He is the only person Stiles knows who’s gotten more chill after turning wolf, which is kind of nice. And Boyd ignores Stiles’s crush on Lydia, rather than making fun of him or getting stupidly jealous.

Okay, maybe stupidly jealous wouldn’t be so bad. It would be nice if someone thought he had a chance with her.

“Did anything weird happen to you this weekend?” Stiles asks.

“I was visiting my mom in Portland. And no.” 

Lydia looks bored and starts examining her nails. She seems to find all the werewolf stuff stultifying, which seems as much like avoidance as an actual emotion.

“Did Derek say anything?” Stiles presses.

“About what?” Boyd asks. Lydia wraps her hand around Boyd’s upper arm. It’s really big. Boyd probably would have been just fine at lacrosse without the bite.

“About what happened this weekend?” Stiles asks.

"Did something happen between you and Derek this weekend?" Lydia asks in a saccharine voice. 

Stiles is so unused to Lydia speaking directly to him that he doesn’t process the words for a moment. As soon as he does, his heart starts hammering and he goes bright red. Don’t look at Boyd, he tells himself. As far as Boyd knows this is just because Lydia’s talking to him. “No!” says Stiles, several seconds late, with such vehemence that he almost falls out of the chair. He rights himself. “No. Of course not. Nothing like that. Not that there’s anything wrong with... that.”

By the time Stiles is done talking and flailing, Lydia looks bored again. He gets to his feet and squares his shoulders. That was totally useless. And embarrassing. Nothing new.

***

Stiles asks Jackson next, but he doesn’t want to talk about it, if the bruise on his hip where Jackson shoved him into the chem lab table is anything to go by. And Isaac and Erica remember just enough to taunt Stiles that Derek’s not there to save him, but not enough to be useful.

“You can’t remember? Hasn’t Derek taught you anything?” Stiles exclaims in frustration. They’ve got him pinned up against a locker, which is silly considering that he’s the one who wanted to talk to them.

“He’s taught us what we need to know,” purrs Erica.

Which means exactly nothing. For a few minutes, Stiles considers letting it go. So what if the pack is getting randomly wolfy when it’s not the full moon. They can take care of it, right?

Except when they take care of it, people get dead, and since Derek won’t tell anyone anything, and no one else seems interested, Stiles goes to Allison.

Mr. Argent isn’t thrilled about Stiles visiting either, but lets him go up to Allison’s room with a warning that he’s only allowed to stay for an hour.

“Do you know what happened the other day?” he asks Allison, after they’ve safely closed the door and listened to Mr. Argent’s footsteps down the stairs. “I mean they’re teaching you stuff, right? Is this in the lore?” He makes finger-quotes on ‘lore’ and Allison smiles and rolls her eyes.

“I have some books,” she says. “But my family doesn’t exactly trust me right now.” She tilts her head. “Can’t think why.”

She pulls a giant, dusty book out from under a pile of clothes and sets it on her bed. She and Stiles kneel on the floor turning the pages. “It’s Old French,” says Allison. 

“Oh look, _chien_ , that’s dog,” says Stiles. 

“Yeah, that part’s about hellhounds,” says Allison. “Different from werewolves and a lot scarier.”

“Could they make wolves turn when they’re not supposed to?” Twenty minutes with Google Translate and a French/English dictionary later, it seems not.

“Here,” says Allison. “This book is huge. Let’s look at the werewolf section. I haven’t translated all of it, but it seems like the best bet.”

“Right!” says Stiles, tearing his eyes away from the section on mermaids. It’s too bad Beacon Hills doesn’t have any of those.

“I translated up to here.” Allison flips to later in the book where a brocade bookmark lies sideways, marking a line of text. “And I haven’t read anything like that. So we’ll have to go further.”

They’re still reading when Allison’s dad opens the door. Stiles flings a blanket over the book as Allison stands and puts her hands on her hips. “Ever hear of knocking?”

“You’re supposed to have the door open,” says Mr. Argent.

Stiles stays hunched up over the book and gives Mr. Argent an awkward wave/salute gesture. 

“It’s _Stiles_ , dad. Geez.”

Stiles tries not to feel insulted by that.

“Your hour’s up,” says Mr. Argent.

“Still working. We’ll be done in fifteen minutes—half hour, tops.”

Mr. Argent gives both of them skeptical looks but allows Allison to shoo him out and close the door.

“Ugh, sorry,” she says.

They search frantically for another ten minutes, and just when Stiles is about to give up for the night he sees something about _appeler le loup-garou_. Calling the wolf. “Do you think...?” he asks.

“‘Calling the wolf,’” she reads. “‘The wolf comes with anger, with pain, with strong emotions and on the full moon. The wolf can also be called by a stronger wolf...’”

Stiles leaps back off the bed. “That must be it—Derek called them...no, he turned too. Does it say...?”

“‘The leader may remain a man, while calling lesser wolves to him,’” Allison reads.

“‘May’? So it could still be Derek?” Stiles asks.

“Yeah, but why?” Allison asks.

Stiles doesn’t have an answer for that, and Allison sends him home, promising to have more for him in a couple of days.

The only thing he can come up with, as he’s falling asleep, is that maybe Derek _wanted_ Stiles in danger, and clinging to him. Under the waterfall. Which could have been kind of sexy except for the fighting and the fleeing and the fact that this is an idiotic line of thought that can only lead to Stiles embarrassing himself the next time he sees Derek.

***

Which turns out to be the next day because Derek’s called a pack meeting, which Scott tells Stiles about at school.

“Do you think we should go?” Stiles asks. “Wait, do you think _I_ should go?”

“Yeah,” says Scott. “Peter Hale said you and Allison were kind of—” he smiles, dopily, and tilts his head to the side “—you know, my pack. So you should come.”

“I really don’t think Derek would be okay with that.”

Scott looks serious. “If you’re not in, I’m not in. That’s what I told him. There’s all kinds of packs.”

Oh. That was kind of cool of Scott. Even if it does mean Stiles is going to be in a house full of werewolves who might turn at any moment.

Boyd, Isaac and Erica are already there when Stiles and Allison arrive with Scott—it seems like they practically live with him. Though Isaac sleeps in the shed sometimes at the cemetery. Stiles gets the impression Erica’s parents don’t care that much what she does. Derek picked them for that, all of them. Children who wouldn’t be missed.

And then there’s Jackson, who wanted it so badly. He comes up the steps as though he’s being dragged, and sits high and away from the rest of the pack, perched at the top of the stairs.

Inside the Hale house smells of charcoal, almost a pleasant scent until a deeper breath reveals the smell of decay that lies underneath. It wasn’t a campfire that did this.

Derek emerges from the shadows when they’re all assembled. He stares briefly at Stiles, where he stands next to Allison, slightly behind Scott, but doesn’t address them. Derek’s message is simple. The pack needs to learn self-control so something like that doesn’t happen again.

“Do you want Stiles to throw lacrosse balls at us?” Scott pipes up. “Because that worked well last time.”

“No,” says Derek. “I want you to help each other.”

"I could usually control it by thinking of Allison,” Scott offers. The other wolves glare at him like he’s that annoying kid in class who always has the answers, and he glares back.

“Scott’s right,” says Derek. “There’s something you can think of, or be near, that will bring you back. You have to discover what it is.” His voice goes quiet. “It’s something important…” He looks uncomfortable. “Something…true.” He covers it with a glare. “You’ll know when you find it.”

Then he clears his throat and he’s back to alpha-command-voice again, but Stiles can see that Derek is new at this. And Derek isn’t the one who made them all change at the swimming hole. He’s not admitting what happened was anything other than a loss of control. He tells the pack about some training sessions they need to do, to get them better at using their wolfy skills. 

“Well, that was stupid,” says Stiles as they walk toward their cars. Hoping Derek can hear him. “You already know this stuff.” He slaps Scott on the shoulder.

“We should tell Derek what we found out,” says Allison.

“You don’t think he knows?” Stiles asks.

Allison shrugs. “Trust, right?” She starts to walk away.

“Wait, just me?” Stiles asks.

“He likes you better,” says Allison with a smile that could mean everything and nothing.

Stiles walks up the stairs as Allison and Scott pull away. He’s about to go in again when he hears Derek’s voice. “I’m not like the other alpha,” Derek’s saying. “I’m not going to require that you kill your friends to be part of my pack. Mostly because I’m not sure you have any.” Jackson makes a noise of protest, which Derek talks over. “But you do need to be part of my pack, and there’s something we can do to cement it.”

Stiles tiptoes across the porch, flinching as the rotted boards creak under his feet, and stops where he can see in one of the windows. And Derek could see him if he looks up, but it’s growing darker outside. The lamps inside should hide him in the reflections.

Derek walks behind Jackson, who flinches.

Sometimes Stiles is a little—ashamed isn’t quite the right word, maybe chagrined is better—chagrinned that Scott isn’t a little smarter. He’s a good best friend, loyal and all that good stuff, but he’s not smart. At least he’s not scared all the time, though. Stiles doesn’t even know how Jackson can stand himself, the way he’s always jumping out of his own skin, always frightened that someone’s going to take something away from him.

Scott actually could be an alpha someday—but Jackson? He’s always cringing, always about to offer his throat.

Derek seems to enjoy the way Jackson flinches when he circles him. “I bet you thought being a werewolf was an end to being scared, didn’t you?”

Jackson doesn’t acknowledge it, but he cringes guiltily. Yes, Jackson did think that.

“It’s you, Jackson,” says Derek. “You’re always going to be scared, but I do think this was the right move for you.” Derek traces a finger over the tops of Jackson’s shoulders. Jackson shudders. “Don’t you want to know why?”

“Why?” Jackson asks sullenly, like it’s being forced out of him.

“Why. Are you sure you don’t know, Jackson?” 

This doesn’t seem like the Derek Stiles knows. This Derek is all posturing and performance. He’s good at it too, scary and good. If Stiles hadn’t seen him frightened before, frightened when he was commanding Stiles to cut off his arm, frightened when he discovered Peter Hale was the alpha, he’d almost believe this was the real Derek.

“Yes, I’m sure I don’t know,” says Jackson impatiently. “What is this about? Am I supposed to fight you or something?”

Derek stops in front of Jackson, his hand still on Jackson’s shoulder. “You could fight me, if you want. That’s one way this can go. I’m sure you’ll fight me a little.”

“What do you want from me?” says Jackson. “Just stop it with the creepy games.”

Derek smiles. It’s not a happy smile. Stiles shouldn’t be enjoying this, but Jackson’s been a total dick for the entire time Stiles has known him. It’s nice to watch him get some of his own medicine.

“Okay, Jackson, I’ll stop with the creepy games,” says Derek. He tilts his head, revealing incisors that glint in the lamplight before he lunges for Jackson and he’s—he’s kissing Jackson. Or biting his face off. It’s hard to tell which it is. And maybe it doesn’t matter, because Jackson convulses like someone’s shoving a knife up under his ribs. He crumples under…whatever this is, until his head tips back like some parody of a romance novel cover. When Derek lets him up, Jackson’s mouth is covered with blood, and his own fangs are out.

“That was still creepy,” says Jackson, his voice gone to a wolf’s growl. 

“That’s nothing,” says Derek, and he lunges at Jackson again.

They fight faster than Stiles can follow, bouncing off walls. Jackson’s good at this, even if he isn’t good at other aspects of being a werewolf. Jackson gets thrown against the walls of Hale house more often than the other way around, but he doesn’t cower away the way Isaac did when Derek growled at him, until Derek gets him in a neck grip and forces him to the ground.

“You’re pack, my pack,” says Derek. “I’m your alpha. You know that now, right?”

Stiles can’t hear Jackson answer, but he can see the submissive twist of his spine. Jackson knows. Jackson exudes a willingness to bend now, erasing the sullen posture of before. He wants to submit. Stiles hardly breathed during their fight but now he feels like he can relax a little bit.

“What would you do for me?” Derek asks.

“Anything," says Jackson. He’s gripping Derek’s hips.

"No funny business," says Derek. He caresses the side of Jackson’s face with his extended claws. “You know what I can do with these. Before you do anything, before you even know you’ve thought something I don’t want you thinking, I can tear out your throat.” He speaks softly, like it’s only a fact, not a threat.

“I know,” says Jackson. He sounds broken, yet, weirdly, more sure than Stiles has ever heard him before. He’s not scared, is the difference. “Let me.”

Stiles licks his lips and looks away. He shouldn’t be seeing this. He’s here now, though. He’s not going to be able to sneak off the porch without Derek hearing him.

Even looking away Stiles can picture what’s happening from the sounds: Jackson undoing Derek’s belt and zipper, the wet mouth-on-skin noises that follow. He glances back. Derek’s head is tilted back, his claws still resting on the scars on the back of Jackson’s neck, while Jackson gives him what looks like a really enthusiastic blowjob. Stiles holds himself as still as he can, his heart hammering in his ears. 

But he can’t help but gasp when he sees the muscles in Derek’s torso jump as he comes. And as soon as he hears himself gasp, he knows Derek heard him too, Derek heard him this whole time. Derek knew he was there, and didn’t care that Stiles saw, or maybe he even wanted Stiles to see.

Does Derek want this from him? Or if he’s not a wolf, maybe it doesn’t matter. 

Did Derek do this with, do this _to_ Scott? And how can Stiles even ask him: did you suck Derek off? Do I have to? Do I want to? Well, maybe I do, but my dad would probably kill me.

He can tell Derek what he and Allison found later. Much later. Maybe he’ll write a letter, with postage, or something. He doesn’t know if he can look at Derek or Jackson ever again. He’s gotten hard without even realizing it, because that’s not the sort of thing he ever thought of as being a turn on. He can’t tell if he’s more scared or—

No, he’s scared, this is fucked up, and he’s leaving. He doesn’t try to be quiet, walking down the porch stairs to his Jeep. He thinks he sees Derek in the rearview when he pulls away.


	3. Chapter 3

Stiles should be getting used to this by now: his face up against concrete, someone bigger, stronger, faster than him slamming him against a wall outside school, near the parking lot.He’s used to parts of his face bruised and aching for a few days afterward. Werewolves, even werewolves who are his best friend, seem to forget that fragile, human flesh heals a lot slower. To them, a bruised jaw isn’t much more than an emphatic gesture.

So his face is up against brick, and Derek’s done this often enough to him that he knows it _is_ Derek. He’s more solid than Jackson, and he smells different, which Stiles shouldn’t actually be able to tell, because no one’s turned him into a werewolf. Yet. 

“Oh, fuck me, it’s you again?” he says, the sarcasm kind of ruined by the fact that he’s in pain, and a little scared. Not really scared; just, like, the reflexive fear that Derek evokes before Stiles remembers that Derek wouldn’t actually hurt him. And then the more contemplative fear that comes from remembering the last time he saw Derek.

“Fuck you?” says Derek, sounding curious. Derek’s hips push up against his.

“That _is_ what I said,” says Stiles. “Kinda wishing I—”

He was going to say, “I hadn’t,” but Derek growls in his ear, “That’s what I’m here for,” and it’s so much like the dream Stiles woke up from and jerked off to this morning that he has to press his face against the wall to convince himself that this is reality. And there are people around.

“You were there last night,” Derek adds, so maybe he doesn’t realize how what he just said sounded.

Stiles doesn’t say anything—there’s nothing he can imagine Derek wants to hear. Derek sighs and lets him up enough that Stiles can turn around and tip his head against the wall. Derek still stands uncomfortably close as Stiles rubs his hands over his face to check for cuts—his dad gets kind of freaked out about stuff like that—and looks up at Derek. 

“What’s going on? You couldn’t just text or something?” Maybe he can distract Derek from whatever scolding he has planned, since Derek’s scoldings tend to be even more painful than his greetings.

“You have to stop it,” says Derek, taking a step back.

“Stop what?” Stiles asks, watching Derek’s mouth because he can’t possibly meet his eyes.

Derek sniffs. “You smell like fear and lust.” He take takes a step back. “Is that what you want? What you saw?”

Stiles isn’t sure if that’s a question he can answer, or even if Derek wants him to. He hesitates long enough that Derek seems to take that for an answer. Derek inhales again and sets his jaw. “I didn’t think so. So just—stop.” He pushes Stiles back against the wall and turns to walk away.

“Just—stop? How?” he calls after Derek, before he realizes what he just admitted. Derek’s shoulders grow tighter, but he doesn’t stop walking.

***

“Hey, so,” Stiles says to Scott, super casually, the next day he’s driving Scott home. “So, did you and Derek ever do that bonding thing? When you, like, joined his pack?”

“Yeah,” says Scott. 

“What does it mean? If you’re in the pack, ‘cause I was reading, and—” Stiles realizes he’s babbling because suddenly he’s not just abstractly wondering if Derek did _that_ to Scott, and what the hell that means and—

"Yeah,” says Scott, looking at him funny, probably because he can hear Stiles’s heartbeat going crazy. “Like, he can call me more easily now, and I can sort of sense what’s up with him.” He rubs the back of his neck. “That guy works out a lot.”

“So you know he bonded, or whatever, with Jackson?”

“Yeah, he said he was going to.”

“Could you, like, _feel_ that?” Stiles keeps trying to watch Scott’s expression—Scott’s a pretty shitty liar, but a lot of his tells are visual—and he almost runs a stop sign.

He slams on the brakes. Scott braces himself on the dashboard. “What’s with the 20 questions?”

“It’s not 20 questions. It’s a simple question. Could you or could you not feel it?”

Scott looks amused and like he thinks Stiles is being crazy again. “Did you take too much Adderall? You know you’re only supposed to take it as prescribed.”

“Thanks, Nurse McCall, for the warning.”

Scott shrugs. “Seriously, though, relax. Your heart’s beating like you just saw Lydia naked.”

Not Lydia. Definitely not Lydia. And not naked. But it’s still too close for comfort. “So how’s Allison dealing with the whole…everything?” Talking about Allison makes Scott forget about everything else, which is convenient, but since none of Allison’s crazy family has done anything extra crazy in the last few weeks, it’s extremely boring.

“What was your bonding ritual like?” Stiles asks after Scott winds down.

“Umm—”

Stiles backpedals fast. “If it’s like, some kind of secret, you don’t have to tell me or anything.”

“No, no, it’s nothing. We just went hunting in the woods and killed a deer together, and I um—I ate the liver.”

“Did it taste good?”

“Kind of, but once I changed back, it was pretty gross.”

“Okay, so you just killed together and that’s what cemented the bond.” Stiles drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “Okay, I can work with that."

“What is with you today?” Scott asks again.

“Nothing, just, you know me, gathering data.” He gives Scott a fake smile and waves as Scott gets out of the car.

Shit. Good thing Scott’s totally oblivious. Was the pack bond strong enough to know what was going on with Jackson? Does it even matter? He’s supposed to—stop. Although that seems like a kind of difficult request. If Derek’s going to be annoyed at everyone who thinks he’s hot—well, that explains his usual sour expression. Thank goodness Lydia never actually got werewolf powers.

Stiles puts the Jeep in gear. He has actual calculus homework to do tonight. He’s been barely skating by for a while because of all this werewolf bullshit, but he really does want to do well on the AP test and get into a college where can get an academic scholarship, because basically all the money his dad has is tied up with the house, and there’s no way he’s letting his dad touch that.

He gets into integrals for a while after dinner, and gets a dozen problems done before he starts zoning out and wondering if he would need an integral to calculate Scott’s average werewolf speed, and then he remembers that Scott said Stiles was pack.

Derek let him stay at the pack meeting. Which might have been because Stiles probably would have spied on him anyway, but might also have been because he is pack in some, albeit human, useless way. 

He hasn’t done any kind of bonding rituals. Maybe humans don’t have to.

He looks up stuff on the internet for a while, but that goes to a really creepy place really fast. Most werewolves don’t have humans hanging out with them. Sometimes, a magician might keep a werewolf companion, but then it seems like usually the magician’s in charge, at least until the werewolf _kills_ him. Other than that, not much about humans hanging out with werewolves, except as prey.

Well. He’s going to sleep well tonight.

Stiles is actually dozing off when he hears a noise and sits bolt upright in bed. He rubs his eyes and looks around. The window is open, the curtains blowing in the breeze.

Stiles doesn’t leave the window open, not anymore. But the lock is pretty shitty, and someone with a long nail could probably jimmy it from the outside.

Stiles knows all the dark shadows in his bedroom, and that one, in his easy chair, isn’t usually there.

“Scott?” says Stiles, although he really doesn’t think that’s who it is. Scott doesn’t go in for scaring him, not on purpose. 

Stiles usually has a short window of time when he can think clearly before he gets really fucking terrified (and, apparently, lustful), so he has to make this count. “Derek?” he asks. And the shadow nods. “Geez, can’t you knock or something?”

“I wanted to talk to you,” says Derek, sliding through the shadows.

“Is this part of that whole ‘stop’ thing?” says Stiles, trying to sound more weary than nervous. “I was trying to sleep.”

“You weren’t being very successful. I could hear it.”

“You were listening to me sleep? Wow, stalker much? Is that something that comes with the bite, because if so, that makes me extra glad I turned it down. I mean, I have those tendencies as much as any teenage guy—no need to encourage it. I—”

“You turned it down?” Derek asks. He speaks slowly, as if he’s controlling his anger. Or as if he’s trying to sound extra creepy and portentous. Well, it’s Derek. No reason it can’t be both.

“Wow, yeah, I didn’t want your creepy uncle to bite me. Uh, sorry?”

Derek’s come closer, somehow, without Stiles realizing. “So it was because it was him?” he asks.

“Yeah, that and I don’t want to be a werewolf. No offense, but I have enough problems.”

Derek visibly deflates. “I shouldn’t have—” then he’s angry again “— _you_ shouldn’t have been watching.”

“Ummm,” says Stiles unhelpfully. Why should he be helpful? But Derek just looks at him, and Stiles can’t keep looking back, especially when he can barely see Derek in the dark, and he knows Derek can see him perfectly. Which makes him blush and bite his lip and have to look away. “Okay, yes, well, I was. I don’t know. Jackson’s such a tool. And--”

“Stiles. Stop talking.” Damn, Derek is really close now. “You really don’t want it?” Derek asks.

“Is that why you’re here?” Shit, Stiles can’t ask for clarification. Not when Derek can surely hear where all his blood is rushing. It’s fight or flight, with a little something extra. Adrenaline is not supposed to be able to do _that_. 

“No, Derek,” he says, knowing how false his calm voice sounds. “I don’t want it.” And to be fair, he doesn’t really want the way Derek humiliated Jackson. It’s the sort of thing that seems fun in fantasy, but in reality, Derek’s not very careful with his strength. Stiles would end up bruised. Even more than usual. He clears his throat. “I don’t,” he says, thinking about the bite and believing it this time. “Neither did Scott. Scott wanted to be free.”

“I’m not even sure that would have worked," says Derek, half to himself. “And if it did, Scott would be the alpha. You think that’s a good idea? He’d be the perfect target for any other wolves who wanted a promotion.”

“Oh, so you saved him, that’s good to know,” says Stiles. “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to get some sleep now. Alone.” Shit, that didn’t come out right.

Derek turns to leave but stops at the window with one hand on Stiles’s desk. “Why did you stay—then?”

Oh yeah, he had a non-prurient reason for staying after the pack meeting. ADD and hormones made him forget until now. “Allison and I found out something about what happened at the swimming hole that day—everyone turning.”

“You researched that with an Argent?” Derek asks, turning.

“Yes, and that’s definitely the take-away here,” says Stiles. “Not the more powerful werewolf who’s gotta be the cause of this.”

“That it?” Derek asks.

“Yeah, isn’t that enough?”

Derek doesn’t say anything, just leaps up on the desk and out the window, the air of his passing sucking the curtains out after him.

It takes a long time for Stiles’s heart rate to slow to normal.

***

“He asked you?” Scott says when Stiles gives him an abbreviated version of what happened last night. Scott doesn’t need to know about Stiles’s reaction to Derek, if he doesn’t already.

Stiles preens a little bit. “Yeah, everyone wants to give me the bite. Wow, that didn’t sound nearly as dirty in my head. You know, there is something kind of dirty about the whole biting thing, did you ever stop to—” And then he stops, not because of the look Scott’s giving him, because that never stopped him before, but because he just almost told Scott about what he saw the night after the pack meeting, and _that_ makes him realize that he doesn’t usually try to keep big gossip like that from Scott. He doesn’t hide things from Scott, especially big juicy gossip like that. 

“I mean, look,” Stiles starts over. “You didn’t want to be a werewolf, right?”

Scott gives him one of those silly half smiles that seems to make Allison gaga. God, maybe Derek did do his super creepy blowjob bonding thing with Scott. Of course, Jackson’s mouth is nicer and—Stiles blinks and rubs his eyes.

“I saw Jackson blowing Derek,” he says all in a rush. “That was their bonding thing. Did he make you do that too? Because I’m pretty sure that’s, like, abusive. Plus, Allison will probably put an exploding arrow in him if she finds out, one he can’t recover from.”

Scott just stares at him for a couple minutes, which is totally justified in this case, then finally wrinkles his brow and says, “Jackson, really? I mean everyone knows about that one party where he hooked up with Danny, but…” Scott shrugs. Of course, he’s happy with Allison, why should he care what other people are doing with their dicks?

Stiles stares at him and Scott starts giggling. “No, no, I did not do that. And I’m sure if Jackson did, then he wanted to.” At Stiles’s continued staring he flails and giggles some more. “There was nothing like that, I swear. We just ate parts of a deer. I think Derek put the rest in his freezer. You know he’s redoing the place.”

“Yeah, and I’m surprised too,” says Stiles. “You’d think he’d like to preserve the creepy, ruined vibe.”

“He’s not a bad guy,” says Scott.

Yeah, except the occasional violence and, oh yeah, getting Jackson to blow him. Stiles actually manages not to say it, because he’s pretty sure even Scott’s going to catch on if he doesn’t shut up about Derek.

“Wait, did you tell him about the super-alpha thing that you and Allison figured out?” Scott asks.

“Yeah,” says Stiles.

“What’d he say?” 

“Nothing. Just jumped out the window all uncommunicative, like Batman or something.”

Because apparently Derek already knew about the super-alpha. Knew about it and didn’t tell the pack.

***

Stiles berates himself on the drive out to the Hale house for not figuring it out earlier. Okay, he’s having sexy, scary dreams about Derek a lot of nights, when there isn’t any scary, sexy reality nearby, and that’s why it takes him so long to realize: Derek’s scared. Derek talked about Scott being a young, inexperienced alpha if he’d killed his scary uncle Peter, but Derek’s only, like five years older than them? Maybe six? Young enough that Stiles still remembers when Derek was the star of the swim team and got on the cover of the Beacon Hills Sentinel. Young enough that he was still in high school when the fire happened.

He’s a young alpha, and he’s scared, and he needs a pack to be strong, and he wants Stiles for that, flatteringly.

Stiles wasn’t lying, he doesn’t want to be a werewolf, but Scott’s his friend, and this affects all of them. 

He waits for Derek on the stairs, although he could be at the other hideout. With Gerard Argent gone, Derek hasn’t been sneaking around as much. Stiles could get in, snoop around, see what Derek’s been fixing up, but he’s not dumb enough to think that would end well for him.

“Were you going to tell them?” Stiles asks when Derek shows up. Derek’s been running through the woods, and he’s sweating just a bit, his t-shirt clinging to his chest, cut off sweat pants low on his hips.

“Tell them what?” Derek asks flatly. He’s breathing a little hard. Stiles doesn’t even want to think how fast he must have been running to actually feel the exertion. 

Stiles swallows. “How scared you are,” he says.

And then, oh shit, Derek is lifting him up and slamming him against one of the porch columns. It cracks a little, and fucking _hurts_.

“Dude, you gotta stop doing that. I get it already, you’re a big bad werewolf and I’m a puny human.” 

“If you got it,” Derek says through gritted teeth, “I wouldn’t have to keep doing it.”

“Way to blame the victim," says Stiles. He’s getting used to Derek doing this, really he is. He’s not even slightly turned on by the fact that Derek’s being wolfy all over him. He’s not, he’s not, he’s not. Maybe if he keeps on saying that to himself, his dick will get the message.

Oh shit, it’s not. Derek would only have to move a little bit—and he does, in fact, move in a little closer, and then sniffs him. “You were going to stop that.”

“Stop distracting me,” Stiles says, swallowing and adjusting his shirt as Derek lets him up. “You’re worried about your power here, as alpha, or whatever. Are you a target? Because if you are, we all are, and we deserve to know about it.”

“We? Are you pack now, Stilinski?” Derek asks, back in Stiles’s personal space.

“I thought—when Scott said I should come to the meeting…”

“Well,” says Derek. “You’re human. That’s more like pet than pack.”

“Good, I didn’t really want to eat deer liver. Raw.” Stiles makes a gagging face.

Derek raises his eyebrows. “That wasn’t what I had in mind for you,” he says. He’s less menacing than—is that a little smile? Is Derek flirting with him? He totally is.

“You’re still dodging my question. Is this something we should be worried about? Is there anything we can do to prepare?” Stiles asks.

Derek sighs like it’s some huge imposition, but then he starts to talk. “You and Allison were right. A higher order alpha can make other wolves change. He’s testing my control—over myself and my pack.”

“And if he thinks you’re weak?” Stiles asks.

Derek sits down on the porch steps. “He’ll kill me and take over the pack,” he says, looking out into the woods.

“So what can we do?” Stiles picks at the railing. It’s bare in the places where it’s not burnt, soft like fabric when he touches it. Derek having his back to Stiles apparently makes it easier for Derek to talk, to answer the hard questions. “Can we at least put up some traps around this place, like the hunters did?” 

“Maybe,” says Derek. “I don’t think it matters much. He’s going to…announce himself eventually. Then I’ll know what he wants.”

“I could do some research, maybe try to figure out who it is,” Stiles offers. “But you gotta stop slamming me up against things. I’m not a werewolf. I can’t heal like the rest of you, and my brain works better un-concussed."

“I thought you liked it,” says Derek, a little pouty. 

Man, he’s just ruining his werewolf cred all over the place tonight. 

It makes Stiles grin all stupid as he skips down the stairs to his car.


	4. Chapter 4

Lining up coffee cans full of marbles in front of his window was _totally_ Stiles’s best idea this week. Even though they’re going to be a pain to clean up.

Because Derek’s incredibly pained expression when he knocks them all over short circuits Stiles’s immediate fear at seeing him on the full moon night.

“Hey there, Derek,” he says, aiming for and failing at casual. “I thought you’d be off doing…pack things tonight.”

“You weren’t asleep,” says Derek, like that’s a good reason for sneaking in someone’s window.

“Whoa, creepy. Do you watch me sleep? No, don’t answer that. Just don’t do it, okay?” No, he wasn’t asleep; he was sitting up and watching Doctor Who episodes on his laptop, because there was no way he was going to sleep on a full moon night, not when who knows what was going on with who knows who out there in the woods. It’s the night he’s most grateful he’s not one of them, and also the night he feels most alone.

Derek moves gingerly around the spilled marbles, toeing them aside to make a path he can walk over silently. It takes a minute or so, a space of time when Stiles can watch Derek’s frown and the grace of his small movements without nervousness.

“Was this a trap for me?” Derek asks.

“Yee-ah,” says Stiles. “And anyone else who thought sneaking in my window was a good idea. Not so sneaky now, are you?” He half expects Derek to get up in his face for that. It’s the kind of attitude that Derek doesn’t like, which is why Stiles can’t seem to help giving it to him, but Derek just looks at him and the marbles, and the window. Everything is blue and black in the moonlight. “Why are you here, Derek? Go, run in the woods, be . . . wild.”

“You don’t tell me what to do,” says Derek, advancing on him.

Stiles shrugs. Derek paces around the little bit of floor he’s cleared. Stiles crosses his arms and watches him. He thought they’d gotten to some sort of, well, holding pattern, where Stiles helped out the pack, and hung around on the periphery, and Derek needled him sometimes, for his—no, it’s not a crush. Crushes are fun, sweet things. This . . . whatever it is, is stupid and dangerous and appalling, and would be a lot better if Derek were, like, a rock star and not someone in his actual life.

And clearly he’s going to have to wait for Derek to say whatever he’s going to say, or disappear out the window again. He refreshes a few news sites, without really registering anything that’s on them, until Derek sighs.

“I can’t be with the rest of the pack tonight. It’s the older alpha—I think—” he gives an exasperated sigh “—he can affect me, the way I can affect the pack. So if he makes me lose control tonight, it will—they will too. And it’s worse if I’m near them."

“So you came _here_?” Stiles squeaks. Derek gives him a baleful look. “Okay, fine, you’re here. So he’s a super alpha? And it’s some kind of werewolf phone tree where if he makes you go all psycho, you make Scott and the others go—”

"Yes," says Derek, tightly. His whole body is coiled like he’s about to snap.

“Again, wondering why you wanted to come here. The chains are at Scott’s, but he doesn’t usually need them anymore.”

“I’d break them,” says Derek. “I…think if I’m here, I won’t turn."

“Here? My dad’s house?”

“Here. With you.” Derek says, as if under extreme duress.

“I thought anger made you more wolfy, not less.”

“I guess I want to protect you. So. I don’t think I’ll ‘wolf out’. Okay?”

Stiles just manages not to comment on that, and the effort it seemed to take for Derek to say it. And how incongruous it is that most of his recent bruises have been from Derek. This development is interesting enough that Stiles can try not poking at it. For a few minutes anyway.

He might grin. A little.

“So. You’re gonna hang out here while I sl—”

“If you tell me you sleep when there’s a full moon, I’m not going to believe you,” says Derek.

Stiles shrugs. “I don’t sleep much at all.”

“You’d be a pretty good—”

“Yeah, and I might die and either way…” He is not going to choose this. He still wants normal things: college, a career, a family, not Derek’s half-life. But with Derek standing there, dangerous and attractive like the edge of a knife, part of him does, so much. “Look, I know you can hear, whatever, that part of me would. But the bigger part of me doesn’t, and I know you respect that.” He actually holds Derek’s gaze until Derek’s mouth quirks and he nods acquiescence.

“So…,” says Stiles. “I was watching _Doctor Who_ , you want to…?”

“What else do you have?” Derek asks.

Stiles clicks a few keys and brings up his digital library. Derek pages through. “Your taste is…” His nasty tone turns wondering as he encounters the vintage section. “Too many horror movies. How do I do this?”

Stiles spreads his hands. “Just click.”

And then they’re watching Hitchcock’s _Notorious_. “No Lon Chaney?” Stiles asks.

“Maybe when it’s not the full moon,” says Derek. Which makes Stiles weirdly warm around the heart area, like Derek might be back for a movie on some random night? Because he and Derek are going to be sleepover buddies? That makes his heart beat faster and blood rush south in a way Derek can surely hear. And they’re on Stiles’s bed, with the laptop and speakers balanced on the blankets.

The movie’s only 90 minutes, so Stiles tries really hard not to fidget, but he’s rarely ever _just_ watching a movie; it’s always movie plus homework, plus checking Facebook, plus researching whatever random thing crosses his mind. This is intensely weird. He does get caught up in Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman’s thing for a few minutes, and the way they talk past each other.

Still, it’s only about a half hour in before Derek puts a hand on his leg. “Stop twitching.”

“I can’t help it,” says Stiles. "This isn’t exactly normal for me.” Derek’s hand is totally on his leg. Stiles is not even a little bit distracted now. His mouth is dry and maybe he’s stopped breathing, but he is definitely not distracted.

“No, I guess not,” says Derek, and then Derek kisses him. 

Stiles has kissed a few people, mostly during stupid party games, but it wasn’t anyone who knew what they were doing, and it wasn’t a _guy_ , and it definitely wasn’t _Derek_ , and so Stiles ends up feeling like his brain’s been totally erased, and he’s grinning like an idiot when Derek lets go of his face.

“Whoa,” he says, actually giggling a little bit, and oh my god, someone kill him now.

“I guess that wouldn’t shut you up.”

“Umm, that came close?” Derek’s still almost on top of him. Stiles wouldn’t have to move much to be kissing Derek again, and so he does, and this time he can pay attention, and realize that, yes, it helps to have one person who knows what they’re doing, because there is a lot less in the way of teeth colliding and a lot more of shit, he’s about to come in his pants.

He makes a choked off noise when Derek’s hand goes for the front of his jeans and then, fuck, he is coming and while it’s still slightly awesome, it’s mostly insanely embarrassing, especially because of the look that Derek has on his face right now. Derek is laughing. At him. 

“I’m just gonna…”

Derek waves him off, still fighting off a smile, without much success.

As he cleans himself up, Stiles thinks very seriously about never going into his room again. Running away. To Seattle, maybe. Sure, the woods are filled with werewolves right now, and there’s some kind of turbo-charged alpha out there that no one knows how to deal with, but he could just . . . of course he can’t. He hears the movie pause. 

Is that what passes for politeness with Derek? Or--he can’t really come up with an alternative. He splashes some water on his face. Okay. He’s going to go back in there.

He pauses again outside his room, which is stupid, because Derek can totally hear him out there. So he goes in, and doesn’t look at Derek as he sits down on the bed again. 

Derek unpauses the movie. A few scenes go by.

Stiles couldn’t say what they were if his life depended on it.

“Not feeling wolfy?” Stiles finally asks. God, this is incredibly uncomfortable. He sort of wants to make out with—okay, for Derek to make out with him again, because he knows who is running that show—and he sort of wants to be alone with his embarrassment and the memories of it so he can properly wallow in the horror.

Derek’s at the window in the time it takes for Stiles to blink. “They’re out there. I don’t think he can affect them without me.”

“Can’t you . . . feel them?”

Derek closes his eyes and inhales, closing and opening his fists. “Yes. They’re safe.”

Stiles suffers a brief fantasy of going over there and standing behind Derek, maybe putting his arms over Derek’s shoulders, and pulling him back…to bed. Like an old-fashioned movie heroine. Yeah, never gonna happen. Even if he were the type, Derek gets irritated whenever Stiles touches him. Which is actually kind of interesting if you think about what they were just doing.

Derek turns back to him and asks, “What are you smiling about?” in his usual pissy way.

“Absolutely nothing,” says Stiles, schooling his face. “Movie?” _Blowjob?_ Of course, he has no idea how to do that, but he’s always been a fast learner.

“Yeah,” says Derek, sort of rolling his eyes. Stiles rolls his eyes in return. They are not talking about it, and that is just fine. More than fine, that is perfect. And soon Derek will deal with the new alpha, and this will not happen again.

This time when Stiles starts vibrating his leg, it’s with nervousness, not boredom. Derek grabs his thigh again, like some kind of horrible film loop.

“Really?” says Stiles. “‘Cause that worked out so well last time.”

“Well. That’s probably not going to happen twice,” says Derek with a small smile.

“Yeah, well, I sure hope not,” says Stiles, his voice going high again, and then Derek’s kissing him _again_ , but it’s different now because Derek’s climbing on top of him and Stiles is nervous but it does feel like he might have a little more control this time.

Derek’s heavy on top of him, the hair on his face that always looked scratchy is actually kind of soft against Stiles’s chin and his hands when he holds on, because he wants Derek to keep kissing him now that he’s gotten the hang of it. There’s lips and tongue and Derek’s breath and his together and the skin of Derek’s back above the edge of his jeans, and Derek sucking on his lower lip and then his neck, and wow, if Stiles had known that a mouth _there_ felt like _that_ it would have figured into a lot more of his fantasies.

He might pass out from how amazing this is, and that’s not even thinking about Derek’s hips grinding against his, and Derek’s hand under his shirt on his side and then Derek’s pulling off Stiles’s shirt. He looks down at Stiles from where he’s straddling him, an unreadable expression on his face that makes Stiles want to cover up. Or take Derek’s shirt off him. Should he do that? Could he do that? Derek made it look easy, but there are probably all kinds of potential snags. Like two arms that have to go through armholes.

Derek solves the problem by pulling his own shirt off, and now that Stiles can really look (instead of monitoring Danny’s reaction), he can confirm that Derek’s chest actually is perfect. Stiles reaches out to touch, his heart in his throat, and when he does, Derek closes his eyes. That seems good. Right?

Stiles laughs nervously. “Hey, say something. I—”

He’s going to say something about how he doesn’t know what he’s doing, except that has to be painfully obvious, but Derek pushes him back down on the bed and doesn’t let him finish speaking. And if it was amazing before, it’s even better with Derek’s skin hot against his. Derek kisses down his chest and tongues one of his nipples and now Stiles is legitimately worried about coming in his pants again. Does this mean he’s gotten to second base? Or does he have to feel Derek up for that?

And now he’s in danger of having a giggle fit, but that’s better than the embarrassment of before.

Or is Derek trying not to wolf out? The urge to giggle disappears immediately, and his hard-on even flags a bit. Thank god. “Hey, you’re not going to fang out—I thought you, like, had to turn into a wolf on the full moon,” he says, gasping on the last words because Derek does something amazing with his tongue.

“No,” says Derek. “Shut up.”

Stiles shuts up. It doesn’t really matter why Derek’s here and doing this. His skin is so smooth and firm, and his thigh rubs up maddeningly between Stiles’s legs, and then he undoes the fly on Stiles’s jeans one-handed. Pretty slick.

“If you, I’m going to…”

“Think about baseball or something,” says Derek.

“Doesn’t work,” says Stiles, shrugging and blushing while Derek looks down at him. “David Wright is too hot.”

Derek smiles slightly at that, and then, with his hand wrapped around Stiles’s dick, squeezes slightly and says, “Don’t.”

“It doesn’t really work that way,” says Stiles, happy that his voice only hitches a little bit. Then Derek lets go, which is sad, but he does let Stiles roll on top of him, which is terrifying in a whole new way, because he has no idea what he’s doing, but he’s wanted to touch, and now he’s going to touch. And lick. And maybe bite. Very gently.

He’s struggling with the button on Derek’s jeans when, Derek flips him onto his back again both suddenly and gently. “You don’t…,” says Derek.

“Please,” Stiles answers. There are parts of this that are awkward and scary and not smooth like movies and porn make it out to be, but parts are easier than he thought they’d be. Like saying what he wants when Derek can hear it anyway.

There’s nothing smooth about what comes next. Derek kisses him, and it’s impossible to concentrate on that and Derek’s dick thrusting against his palm, Derek’s fingers wrapped around his. It better be okay to come now because he does, messily, half choking with it.

He guesses Derek must have too, because when he’s paying attention to the world again, Derek’s lying next to him, and the movie’s still playing in the background. Wow, he hadn’t even heard it.

“Alphas don’t have to turn at the full moon,” says Derek.

“But you wanted to?” Stiles asks.

“I always want to,” says Derek. “Moon’s down now.”

“Yeah, moonrise is early this time of year because of the—never mind.”

“So I can go,” says Derek.

“Oh?” says Stiles, his voice getting really high. That’s not cool. “Glad to help,” he adds, now pitching his voice too low like some kind of phone sex operator. Oh god.

Derek doesn’t say anything as he pulls up his jeans, tugs on his shirt. He stops for a moment, looking out the window. With the moon down, it’s black out there, but maybe he can see anyway. Then he leaps onto the desk, somehow missing any of the spilled marbles, and out onto the lawn. 

Stiles gets up and closes the window after him, bruising his heel on a big shooter near the side of the bed. There’s going to be a lot to clean up tomorrow.

***

Things that are different when Stiles wakes up the next morning: his bed smells like—well, he doesn’t have a werewolf’s sense of smell or anything, but he’d swear that it smells like Derek, or his aftershave, or something, and Stiles has a stupid amount of energy for this early in the morning, and a really stupid grin on his face because last night was _awesome_. And creepy and strange but that’s sort of Derek’s thing, but also _awesome_.

Things that are not different: he’s almost late for school, and Jackson trips him for no good reason on his way to AP Computer Science. Unless Jackson can tell what happened last night. Can he? Stiles showered, but werewolf senses are very keen. And now he’s covered with nervous sweat, which is gross, but probably covers up anything else. Stiles sniffs at himself surreptitiously as he sits down.

The teacher’s talking about mapping algorithms today, finding the shortest distance between two nodes on a map, and that makes Stiles think of Derek, which makes him think of why Derek was in his room last night. There’s another werewolf in town, one who can turn Derek, who might not be the most controlled person Stiles knows, but he’s a lot more than any of the other wolves Stiles has met.

But before, when Uncle Creepy was the alpha, there were lots of animal attacks. So if he can map a pattern of attacks, he might be able to figure out where the alpha is from, and if they know that, they’re closer to figuring out who it is.

It’s such a good idea that Stiles totally ignores what the teacher’s saying, which he suffers for when he has to go up and write an example of a recursive algorithm on the board, but which also keeps him from thinking about last night with Derek for almost five minutes. Then he remembers why his lips feel extra sensitive and he has to work to hide the stupid big grin his face wants to make.

He vibrates his way through the rest of school, avoiding Scott whenever he sees him, which is possible today because Scott misses the morning class they share, and they don’t have any together in the afternoon. Scott will have to find out sometime, of course, but Stiles barely believes it happened, and doesn’t want to have whatever discussion it would require. 

As soon as Stiles gets home, he uses the connection to the police database that he’s not supposed to have to search for weird animal attacks in the area. It takes a couple days, during which he doesn’t see Derek anywhere. Which is kind of disappointing.

He gets a map of Northern California and pins to mark the attack sites, feeling like a real detective or possibly a crazed serial killer. Although it could be other packs. He really needs to know more about werewolf organization, and it’s not as if Derek’s going to tell him anything. Just because they were making out and Derek gave him a hand job.

Stiles stores that memory carefully and tries not to go to it too often, no more than ten or twelve times an hour, because he doesn’t want it to get tired, doesn’t want to get used to the way his stomach flips over when he thinks about it. Regardless of the fact that Derek seems to hold him and pretty much everyone in contempt. Regardless of the fact that Derek was probably just bored or whatever, waiting out the full moon. 

It’s not like he’s in love with Derek or something stupid, it’s just that night was pretty awesome. And embarrassing and uncomfortable, but those feelings fade easily when compared to the tactile memories of actually touching.

Stiles puts up all the attacks he can find in the last few weeks in red pins, older attacks in orange, going back a year to black pins. There might be a trail in the past few weeks leading up from the south, but there’s a lot of noise in the data. He really needs to understand this more.

Of course, Derek hasn’t told Stiles the number of his latest cell phone, and he’s probably been using a burner ever since Stiles pointed out it might be worthwhile for him. Stiles is really way too helpful sometimes. So he drives out to the Hale house in the early evening. The unseasonable heat has stayed even though the school figured out how to fix the AC, which seems unfair. Days like these are made for lounging in potentially werewolf-infested pools.

Twilight hangs heavy over the trees when he gets to the Hale house. Derek’s been making some changes. The inside only smells slightly of burnt paint. 

“Derek?” Stiles calls out. “You know it’s super creepy that you live here, right?”

Derek appears at the top of the stairs, in one of those too fast to see blurs. Stiles jumps and braces for the next thing. Derek loves a dramatic entrance, but it doesn’t make his sudden moves any less startling.  
He doesn’t leap, though, or do anything menacing, just paces back and forth at the top of the stairs, silhouetted against the window.

“You shouldn’t be here,” says Derek.

That’s just Derek for hello, so Stiles ignores it. “I’ve been trying to track the super alpha—”

“Don’t call him that.”

“What should I call him? The Guy? It could be a girl.” Derek doesn’t answer. “Okay so, I’ve been trying to track ‘The Guy,’—” he makes air quotes “—by following a pattern of animal and human attacks, and I think maybe he came up from LA over the last few weeks, but it’s hard to tell because of all the other attacks. So I need to know how many werewolves are in California. Do you guys have territories? How does that all work?”

Derek just glares at him. Stiles throws his hands up. “I can’t help you unless you tell me something.”

“You shouldn’t be helping. This is dangerous.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Yes, obviously. Dangerous for Scott, dangerous for my—for everyone in Beacon Hills, especially people who don’t know what’s going on.”

“I’m dangerous,” says Derek, sounding more desperate. 

“Oh yeah,” says Stiles sarcastically. “You’re super-dangerous.”

“I could turn...,” Derek adds.

Oh, right, Derek’s scared. Remembering that makes everything he does a lot easier to understand, although it’s hard to think of someone so intimidating as scared. “I thought you were less likely to turn when I was around,” says Stiles, crossing his arms.

“I still could,” says Derek.

“How are you right now? Feeling toothy?” Stiles doesn’t give him time to respond. “No? Then tell me something. I get—sort of—why you want to keep the pack in the dark, because you want to be big all-knowing super-wolf, but I _know_. So why can’t you tell me?” Stiles flushes after delivering that speech. When did he become someone who lectures werewolves? 

Derek takes a few steps down the stairs and pauses under the chandelier, looking fierce or irritated (fiercitated?) for a moment before sighing and joining Stiles on the first floor.

Hey, remember when we were making out? That was awesome? Stiles sort of wants to ask, but self-preservation, or dignity-preservation stops him. Plus, now that he’s actually standing next to Derek again, he can’t really believe it happened. 

“Come on,” says Derek, and Stiles follows him down a hall, past a second set of stairs—servant stairs—to a closed door, which Derek opens to a finished, furnished, cozy study with a worn-in couch along one wall, with pillows and blankets stacked on it. So that answers that question: Derek sleeps here, which is still kind of sad, but less self-consciously tragic than what Stiles pictured, a water-stained mattress in the basement under a bare bulb.

“What did you find?” Derek asks.

“Nuh-uh,” says Stiles, “you first. I’m tired of being in the dark.”

Derek sort of lunges toward him, and Stiles jumps back. Derek grins as Stiles’s heart rate skyrockets. 

“Yeah, that doesn’t really work anymore,” says Stiles.

“Really,” says Derek, stalking toward him. Stiles’s heart hammers again, which Derek can surely hear, but he stands his ground. He’s not going to complain if Derek wants to get in his personal space. And suddenly his body remembers, _this_ is how it happened last time, this is how it could happen again.

“Yes, really,” says Stiles, his voice wavering. Derek’s eyes drop to look at Stiles’s mouth, and fuck, Derek is an asshole, because he _knows_ ; he can hear and smell everything this is doing to Stiles. Stiles bites his lip. “You gonna tell me, or are you going to...” he puts a hand out to touch Derek’s shoulder, undecided if he’s trying to push Derek away, or pull him close. His flesh hardly yields at all; it’s thrumming with tension.

“You know,” Stiles babbles, because he’s actually touching Derek, and what might happen next is a lot more interesting than tracking werewolves, “I’m sixteen, so I’m totally used to having inappropriate and embarrassing fantasies about, basically, everyone, so if you’re trying to make me uncomfortable, you’re going to have to try harder.” That’s not actually true. Everything about Derek makes him uncomfortable and twitchy.

Derek tilts his head. “Everyone? Scott?”

“Ew, no, not Scott.”

Derek half-smiles. “That’s good.”

Okay, Derek doesn’t want to lose, that’s where his posturing comes from more than anything else. But Stiles can’t really lose here, not unless Derek actually decides to make good on one of his violent threats. They can either continue this game of gay chicken or Derek can tell him. 

Derek growls and backs off. Stiles lets out a breath. 

“Fine. You’re right, he’s probably from LA.”

“City werewolves?” Stiles asks.

“Yeah, some of...us—“ he pauses and looks pained “—prefer cities. There’s a sort of council that meets in LA. My—people from my family—used to go to the all-pack meetings.”

“So your family was mostly werewolves—does that mean that Scott’s kids will be werewolves? Does Allison know that? And what about territories? How many werewolves are there in California? Are there...”

And he trails off when he realizes he’s babbling, he’s followed the wrong thread, and most importantly, Derek’s staring at his mouth again. “Do you want to know about our visitor or not?” Derek asks.

“Yes,” says Stiles, and presses his lips together before he can say anything else. He talks too much; it’s a flaw.

“It’s not that organized, but sometimes a high powered alpha will check up on other packs. Young packs.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” says Stiles. “Just let him meet the pack. Things have been quiet up here.”

Derek frowns. “For a couple weeks, maybe. Before that we’ve had a murderous alpha, a rogue, a dead omega, and—”

“And a shitload of hunters,” Stiles finishes. Not to mention the first dead alpha who started this whole thing: Derek’s sister. Stiles knows his way around not mentioning stuff like that, though, and so does Derek.

“So what happens if he doesn’t like what he finds?”

“Depends,” says Derek. “He could just split it up, move the new ones to other packs.”

“What happens to you?” Stiles asks.

“If he doesn’t think I’m a worthy alpha, he’ll kill me,” says Derek in a voice so flat, it’s the scariest thing Stiles has ever heard from him. 

“That’s pretty harsh,” says Stiles after too long waiting, watching the pulse jump in the side of Derek’s neck. 

“That’s how it works. They have to keep all the wolves safe. Alphas need to be strong.” And Derek’s worried he won’t be strong enough. His sister was supposed to be the alpha, and now—there’s nothing Stiles can do, and Derek can’t magically become whatever this super alpha wants.

He swallows. “Do you want to see the map?”

“Sure,” says Derek, setting his jaw. Stiles pulls his laptop out of his backpack and sits down on the couch. He brings up the picture he took of his map. Derek sits down beside him. “You did this?" asks Derek, in the same tone of voice Stiles’s dad uses right before he asks why Stiles can’t apply his smarts in more constructive ways.

“Yes,” says Stiles. He explains the color scheme, looking at the cluster of pins around Beacon Hills. There have been many deaths here, mostly because of Peter Hale, though, not this new alpha.

“May I?” Derek asks, gesturing at the computer. Stiles hands it over, surprised. Derek can be polite when he wants to. Who knew?

Derek uses a paint tool to draw lines over the map, cutting it into areas that follow rivers and mountains. Territories. The desert territories cover more land than the mountains and city territories. Derek traces his finger over the line of red pins leading down to LA. “He took two weeks to come up here.” He stops at a bigger pin. “What’s this?”

“A dead human,” says Stiles, feeling cold.

“Probably a werewolf. Punishment. The others are deer?”

“And a house cat,” says Stiles. “Why?”

“We’re predators,” says Derek, turning to face him. “It’s a need.” And now Stiles is scared again. Derek’s a predator, and Stiles feels like a cornered rabbit, one who sees his death coming and stares back at it, fascinated.

“The ones who live in cities, what do they hunt?” Stiles asks.

“Humans,” says Derek.

Stiles hardly breathes. “Don’t the hunters, or the police...?”

“There are places the hunters have written off, places police don’t patrol. The packs are the law there.” He seems caught in a memory then shakes it off. “These are secrets. If he—” no need to say who Derek means now “—finds out I told you, we’re both dead.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that at the beginning?” says Stiles asks, standing up. Derek’s still hunched over the maps on the computer, the lines and territories Stiles can’t unsee.

“You wanted to help,” says Derek, looking up at him. “I told you it was dangerous.”

“And you wanted me to help,” says Stiles. 

"You asked," says Derek. “You already knew too much.” Which means that he was already in danger, and all Derek did was put _himself_ in more danger by telling Stiles. Because until now, Derek could say that he hadn’t revealed anything.

“Oh.” He puts a hand on Derek’s shoulder again, and immediately finds it twisted behind his back, not quite to the point of pain, but definitely to the point of immobilization. Why does he have this need to touch werewolves? It never works out well. Well, except Derek’s pressed up against him, so this isn’t all bad. Maybe this is Derek’s creepy idea of flirting. “Okay, well, you’re right,” he says quickly. “I do want to help. So now that we know where he’s from, what else do we need to know? I can—”

“What does it take to shut you up?” Derek asks. His mouth almost touches Stiles’s skin, where his jaw meets neck, territory Derek’s been over before, skin that wants his touch again.

“That works,” Stiles breathes. 

“You know,” says Derek, lips nearly grazing him, so close Stiles can feel the heat of each word, “you leave your mouth open like that, someone’s going to put something in it.”

Stiles has heard that before of course, from asshole guys at school—rapey jokes are the _best_ —but not like this, a promise more than a threat. Stiles flashes to the moment of seeing Jackson on his knees in front of Derek, an image both hot and disturbing. He doesn’t want that to be him, to be someone Derek treats with such contempt. 

“Hasn’t happened yet,” he says. Derek lets up the pressure on Stiles’s arm and Stiles turns to face him. The way Derek’s looking at him makes his blood rush to his dick with a speed that makes his knees weak.

And Derek’s kissing him again and this time it can’t be just because he wants to distract himself from the full moon. Derek _wants_ him, which makes Stiles grin against Derek’s mouth.

“What?” Derek asks, pulling back to look at him.

“Sorry, is this supposed to be serious?” says Stiles.

Derek actually cracks a smile, a real one. It doesn’t last long, just a flash that makes Stiles’s throat hurt. He looks at Stiles. “This _is_ dangerous,” he says.

“What, hooking up with you?” Stiles waves his hand as though this sort of thing happens all the time. “No more than yesterday.”

Derek pulls Stiles down on his couch on top of him. Guess he does want that blowjob. It doesn’t have to be humiliating; it sure doesn’t feel like it’s meant to be, not with Derek sprawled back on the couch letting Stiles look and touch, looking as pleased as he ever does. 

Stiles pauses before undoing Derek’s pants because it’s still weird that he’s allowed to do this, that Derek wants him to. Then Derek gives him an expectant look, and Stiles just goes ahead, like this is Christmas morning, and one of his presents is big and dangerous and stupidly hot.

There’s not a soft inch on Derek, hah, and several of those not soft inches are right there in front of Stiles. A muscle in Derek’s side jumps against Stiles’s hand where he lets it touch skin. And yep, that’s Derek’s cock, right _there_. Wow, he has absolutely no reference to go on here, except what he might like if anyone ever did this to him. He takes a deep breath and licks the head. Takes like skin, totally normal except the part of his brain that’s doing a weird I’m-sucking-a-dick dance. 

Derek moans, which seems like a good thing. He does it again, and this time Derek props himself up on his elbows and looks at Stiles. “You have no idea what you’re doing,” he says. 

“I didn’t think it was that bad,” says Stiles, half to himself. Wasn’t moaning a good thing? 

Derek makes a weird expression, and says, “Let me show you.”

He pushes Stiles back on the couch and undoes his belt and jeans with an air of efficiency that’s pretty hot, and doesn’t leave much room for awkwardness. “First rule: no teeth.”

“Well, thank goodness for that.” Yeesh, he hadn’t actually been worried about werewolf teeth on his dick, but now he is.

Derek rolls his eyes. “No, you. When you’re giving head, don’t use your teeth. Lips and tongue only. Kissing and sucking is good. You can use your hands, or don’t, but it’s easier if you do.” He wraps his fingers around Stiles’s dick, which, even if that’s all he had planned it would be pretty great. 

“Hey,” says Derek. “Don’t come right away this time, okay?”

“Hey, I—” Stiles begins, and then he can’t finish that thought, or even think at all, because even though he’s imagined this a lot, there’s no way he could have imagined all of this, a mouth, Derek’s mouth around him, hot and skilled and—Derek squeezes his hip warningly—right, he’s supposed to be taking a lesson from this.

Thinking about the details doesn’t help, though. Derek stops when Stiles is getting close and bites the inside of his thighs, not hard—guess teeth are okay there—his stubble tickling Stiles’s skin. And then Derek’s mouth is around him again, strong suction like no feeling he’s had before. Could actual fucking be better than this? 

“Hey, I’m about to—hey,” he says weakly, grabbing Derek’s shoulder. Derek just keeps going. Holy shit, Stiles is not going to be able to stop; this is happening, and oh god, it’s amazing, he’s coming and Derek’s still sucking on him as he comes and he licks Stiles clean after, while Stiles is still throbbing with it.

Derek’s lips are wet, and he wipes them off with the back of his hand as he sits up. “You don’t have to swallow,” he says, sounding somehow both blissed-out and defensive. “I just—like to.”

Whatever. Stiles is a fast learner, even if his brain is all fireworks and not much coherent thought right now. Hands, yes, no-hand blowjobs are not for beginners, Derek says. That does make it easier. He sucks on the head, still feeling when Derek did that to him. He can sort of swirl his tongue around it—did Derek do that? He doesn’t remember. Derek’s making incredibly hot noises right now. Stiles opens his eyes to watch Derek’s stomach tense as Stiles sucks him off. He grips Stiles’s shoulder, momentarily painful, then only a caress. 

“Yes, like that,” says Derek. “Not so fast, I want to—oh god, okay, yes, faster, soon.” Wow, Derek’s more talkative like this than Stiles has ever seen him. He’s totally going to use that to his advantage at some point. “Yes, like that, okay, I’m going to—” and yeah, Stiles isn’t quite up for swallowing , um, jizz, so he finishes with his hand, and watches Derek make a stupid and wonderful face when he comes.

And as soon as Derek’s done he pulls Stiles up on top of him and kisses him like he did before they did any of this, as if he could lose himself in it. His hand finds Stiles’s dick—he’s hard all over again because this is pretty much the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to him—and jacks Stiles off against his stomach.

“I suppose this is why you didn’t hear me knocking,” says a voice from behind Stiles. Stiles squeaks and grabs whatever he can to cover himself. The super alpha—because it could only be him—is taller and beefier than Derek, with a deep voice that’s too much for this small room. He stands in the doorway, leaning on it, then straightens up and walks into the room.

“Be still,” he says, and Stiles sits, pinned to the couch by the force of his presence. He wears a broken-in suit that still fits him perfectly. The room’s only lamp lights half his face a rich brown, while shadows hide the other half. His eyes flash red for a moment, before darkening. Even with six feet between him and Stiles, he takes up too much space. Stiles wants another few feet between them, or more than that, a city, a state. And to be wearing clothes. Definitely clothes.

“Derek Hale,” he says. “I’ve come to meet you. And your pack. I trust you have no objection.”

Derek looks daggers at him. For a moment Stiles thinks he might make an attack, but after a long moment, he lowers his head. “No.”

The alpha turns to Stiles. “Leave,” he says.

Stiles contemplates some kind of gesture of solidarity, but it wouldn’t change anything, and Derek can take care of himself. Stiles can’t even think of something clever to say as he backs out of the study, covering himself with his wadded up clothes. He stops in the hallway to pull them on. Maybe he’ll hear something.

“Stiles, go,” says Derek, through the closed door, sounding more desperate now. No eavesdropping, then.

As soon as he gets to his car, he pulls out his phone to call Scott. Scott should be able to help, he’ll get the rest of the pack together and…what? Fight the super-alpha? Derek will not want Scott or anyone to know that the super-alpha’s here to evaluate his performance. He puts the phone back. Better to wait.


	5. Chapter 5

Stiles sneaks in without his dad seeing and takes a shower. He sits down under the spray for a few minutes because his knees won’t hold him up. His body thrums with adrenaline and behind that a happy exhaustion from sex with Derek. He doesn’t know whether to freak out or take a nap.

“Oh, I thought you were out,” says his dad when Stiles comes downstairs to raid the fridge. There’s some old pizza that is too much like cardboard even for him without resorting to his wet-paper-towel-in-the-microwave trick. 

“Nah, I’m in tonight,” says Stiles.

His dad looks at him funny, like he might ask what’s going on, but seems to think better of it. Thank God.

Stiles calls Scott as soon as he can get away. “Are you okay?” he asks as soon as Scott picks up the phone.

“Yeah,” says Scott. “Is something going on?” Stiles doesn’t answer for a moment, and Scott continues, “Because I really hope not. I’m supposed to see Allison tonight.”

Stiles hesitates, listens to Scott getting impatient, as he always does when something’s standing in between him and Allison.

“Just don’t—can you tell if Derek’s okay right now? Through your pack bond?” 

“Do I want to know what’s going on?” Scott asks. “Do I _need_ to know?” 

“Can you?” Stiles asks again.

Scott is silent for a moment then makes a perplexed noise. “He seems okay. Not happy, but not hurt, either.”

Stiles lets out a sigh of relief. “Okay, that’s good. Go do your thing with Allison. Don’t worry about it.”

“Really?” says Scott. “You’ll tell me what’s going on later?”

“Yeah,” says Stiles. “I don’t think it’s urgent.” Unless the new alpha changes them all for his own amusement. Unless Derek suddenly _is_ in danger. “Just, like, check in with him every so often, okay?”

Anyone else would probably want to know more details, but Scott’s single-mindedness comes in handy sometimes. And he’s used to doing what Stiles says. Good thing Stiles doesn’t abuse that. Much.

Stiles can’t sleep that night for the longest time. There is not a single thing he can do. He can’t even research anymore, because the alpha’s here, being all intimidating, passing judgment. And when Stiles isn’t thinking about that he can’t help but enjoy the memory of what happened before. Of course, the super alpha might be planning to kill them all, but—Derek gave him a blowjob. No wonder Scott has been so useless about Allison. And they’re going all the way.

Which is also not a thought that makes sleep any easier. Whatever’s going on with Derek is weird enough without bringing, like actual, penetrative sex into it. And there’s also Jackson, and whatever’s going on with him and Derek, which Stiles really doesn’t want to think about. 

Not that he wants to date Derek or anything. His dad would totally freak. Derek’s hot and seems to like Stiles more than he’s willing to admit, which is sort of funny and flattering, but he’s also kind of a nightmare bundle of issues.

***

And then Derek goes incommunicado for the next three days, no lurking, no pack meetings. Erica, Isaac and Boyd aren’t in school, Lydia doesn’t know where they’ve gone, Scott doesn’t seem to care, and when Stiles asks Jackson, he just says, “Yeah, Derek said I should come to some kind of meeting or something.” He smirks. “Whatever.”

“And you didn’t think this was worth telling me, or Scott?”

“Whatever,” says Jackson again. “I’m sure he told Scott.”

“I’m sure he didn’t,” says Stiles.

Jackson just shrugs and walks away. Stiles really wants to hit him in his pretty stupid face. It sucks not to have super strength.

“Okay, he did tell me,” says Scott when Stiles interrogates him again after practice. “He didn’t want me involved.”

“He didn’t want you involved? He was practically begging you to join the pack before,” says Stiles, packing away his gear with more force than was necessary. If only Coach had let him play, he might have been able to purge some of this nervous energy.

“Okay, he didn’t want _you_ involved,” Scott admits.

“Did he say _why_?” Stiles asks.

“The visitor—Moreau—he just wants to meet the—” Scott lowers his voice “—werewolves now, I think.”

“Did Derek—do you know what he wants?”

“I don’t know,” says Scott. “I think he’s here to see if Derek needs any help.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Stiles mutters.

Scott squints at him. “What? You know, because of what happened with his sister, and all the hunters in town?”

“Yeah, okay,” he says. He should tell Scott what’s going on with the super-alpha, Moreau, that he may have more in mind than _helping_. He should tell Scott everything, but he’s not sure what to think about him and Derek, let alone try to explain it to Scott, especially since he told Scott about the whole Jackson thing. And does Jackson know? Was that regular Jackson dickishness before or jealous Jackson dickishness?

That night Danny comes over to write up their final lab report for Chemistry. Stiles is a bundle of nerves because Scott’s refusing to take this as seriously as it deserves, Jackson’s being even more of a dick than usual, and the rest of the pack won’t talk to him on general principle. It’s driving Stiles crazy. 

Of course, he can’t talk to Danny about any of that. They sit in Stiles’s room, reading over each other’s parts of the report—or that’s what they’re supposed to be doing anyway. Stiles has just been staring at Danny’s well formatted chemical equations—seriously, did his parents spring for a copy of Mathematica? because that’s just not fair—for the last ten minutes without turning the page or absorbing anything.

“What?” says Danny eventually. “Is something wrong with it?” He sounds doubtful, and he should. Danny’s close to challenging Lydia for best GPA in school, and chemistry is easy, at least on paper.

“No, I’m just—what if—what if hypothetically I, or I mean, a friend of mine, had hooked up a couple times with an older guy and then he—” Stiles closes his mouth when he notices Danny’s incredulous expression. “You...wouldn’t want to hear about this.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” says Danny. “If you think you’re the only guy at school having a sexual identity crisis who wants advice…”

“I’m not having a—wait, who? Was it Jackson?” Stiles asks.

Danny just gives him a look. “Do you have any corrections, or should we integrate the files and write up the conclusions?”

“It’s just that he’s disappeared, and…there’s other stuff going on too…it’s not like things were normal before, but isn’t that kind of weird?” Stiles asks.

Danny puts down Stiles’s half of the paper. “Okay, if I give you advice will you promise to (a) never talk to me about your sex life again and (b) finish this lab report?”

“Okay,” says Stiles, mentally crossing his fingers. Of course he’s going to ask Danny for advice again. Danny’s the most together person Stiles knows and he actually has some experience in this area.

“This guy,” Danny prompts.

“This hypothetical guy,” Stiles corrects.

Danny rolls his eyes. “This hypothetical guy, is it the guy you told me was your cousin?”

“Miguel? Um, hypothetically?”

“And I’m guessing he’s not actually your cousin.”

Stiles grimaces. “That’d be correct.”

“And he’s what, twenty-four?”

Stiles does the arithmetic he’s been avoiding. “Maybe. Or twenty-three.”

“You really want my advice?” Danny asks.

Stiles nods.

“Here it is: don’t fuck older guys.”

Stiles gives him a look. "Thanks, Danny, that was really helpful."

Danny softens. “That guy was obviously bad news. If he’s gone, it’s probably a good thing. He’s not going to stay gone though, probably. He’ll come back just when you’ve mostly forgotten about him, and fuck you again, meanwhile you’ll have to keep the whole thing secret, and you won’t get a chance to date anyone else.”

“I don’t want to—”

“And don’t tell me you’re in love with him and you don’t want to go out with anyone else. The sneaking around thing might feel all forbidden and sexy now, but it’s just another way to hide who you are.”

“I’m not in love with him,” says Stiles, scoffing. Derek’s also not fucking him, or vice versa, but maybe that’s not what Danny means. Maybe blowjobs count if you’re gay? 

“You’ll have to hide it from all your friends and family,” Danny continues, as if Stiles hadn’t said anything, “and I can tell that’s already stressing you out.”

“Umm, thanks,” says Stiles. “Maybe we should work on the lab report now, and by the way I’m sorry about whatever—” he waves his hands at Danny “—or you know, whoever did that. To you.”

“I’m over it,” says Danny. He gives Stiles a curious look. “If you’re in trouble, you’d tell someone, right?” he asks.

Probably not, but only because Stiles doesn’t get into trouble anyone can do anything about. “Yeah,” he agrees uncomfortably. “Sure thing.”

It doesn’t take too long to finish up the report. Danny dictates the conclusion while Stiles types and makes edits and his own additions. 

Stiles walks him out and Danny stops outside for a moment. “It’s not a good situation,” Danny says. “I know some people you can talk to, seriously.”

“Thanks, Danny,” says Stiles. “It’s not like that, but—thanks.”

He watches Danny drive off in the gathering dusk. He’s probably right, although it’s not like Stiles is really going to turn down Derek if he wants to—Stiles can’t really think of what they’re doing as fucking—if he wants to hook up again. But he can try not to think about it and not let it mess with his head. 

“Who was that?” Derek asks, suddenly standing on the porch and giving Stiles a heart attack.

“Are you kidding me?” Stiles yells. “How long have you been here? Were you listening?”

“What does he mean it’s not a good situation?” Derek asks. He’s not actually slamming Stiles up against a wall, probably because Stiles’s dad is home, but it sounds like he wants to. “What have you been telling him?”

“None of your wolfy business,” says Stiles. When Derek tilts his head at him, Stiles realizes that’s a little ambiguous. “I mean it, I didn’t tell him anything about your wolfy business. Not like anyone would believe me.”

“Is he interested in you?” Derek asks, widening his eyes.

“No, he’s one of the most popular guys in—” he stops and stares at Derek for a moment. “How is that any of your business?”

“Are you interested in him?” Derek asks.

Stiles very deliberately thinks about it for a moment. Danny is very good-looking but no, Stiles isn’t particularly attracted to him. Maybe because Danny isn’t a terrifying stalker like something out of a _Twilight_ novel. Which says awful, awful things about Stiles. “What do you want?” he asks, rather than any number of other things he could ask, starting with _where the hell have you been?_ and ending with _are you seriously jealous of Danny?_

“Moreau. He wants to see you,” says Derek.

“Why does he want to see me?” Stiles asks.

“I’ll explain on the way,” says Derek.

“I don’t know,” says Stiles, pacing in front of his door. “This sounds dangerous.”

“You don’t usually mind that,” says Derek quietly.

“Usually one of my friends is in trouble,” says Stiles. He’s been looking at the boards of the porch, and now he looks up at Derek, expecting him to look angry, or exasperated. That would be almost reassuring. “ _Is_ one of my friends in trouble? Can you tell me what the hell this is about? For once?”

Derek’s face hardly changes, but Stiles has spent so long watching him that he _knows_. It’s not Scott or anyone else who’s in trouble, it’s _Derek_. 

Stiles swallows. “Okay, let’s go.”

***

Moreau’s taken over Derek’s study. Even without a supernatural sense of smell, Stiles can sense the difference. This room belongs to him now. He’s just as intimidating the second time around. Sitting, he seems to take up more space than his body occupies. If Stiles were a wolf, he’d want to cower and whine. He kind of wants to do it anyway, if he can’t run off yipping into the night.

“This is the boy,” says Moreau to Derek. His nostrils flare and he inhales. “You’ve been staying away from him? My presence shouldn’t change anything for you.” Then he shakes his head and smiles slightly, a hint of charm that’s not the least comforting. “My name is Luke Moreau,” he says to Stiles. “I think that anything else I’d have you know about me, you know already.”

He stands and stalks toward Stiles. Maybe a wolf could walk that way, but he reminds Stiles more of a panther, sleek and predatory and perfectly confident. Next to him, Derek looks small and young. “Leave us,” he says to Derek.

“No.” Derek crosses his arms.

Luke Moreau’s mouth quirks at that, and he doesn’t insist. “Have a seat, Stiles, is it?”

Stiles nods, his mouth gone dry, and sits down on the couch. The fabric is velveteen, smooth until Stiles grips it hard; then it digs into his palms. It’s one to thing to risk himself by doing something stupid and daring to try to save someone; it’s something else to be sitting in front of someone who’s obviously deciding whether to let him live or not.

Moreau asks some easy questions: how old Stiles is, about his family situation. It doesn’t occur to Stiles to lie or protest. Something about Moreau’s presence shuts down all of his usual defense mechanisms. Moreau will know if he’s lying or even if he’s dancing around the truth.

“Hale tells me you’ve learned quite a bit about our kind. Tell me about that.”

So Stiles tells him about the past six months. Scott getting bitten, the alpha, how Scott needed someone to help him learn. He realizes that it doesn’t sound good for Derek, but maybe that’s okay since Derek wasn’t the alpha then. Moreau, when Stiles steals glances at him, doesn’t react to his words at all, only strokes his beard every so often. 

Finally Stiles tells Moreau about when they found out who the alpha was, how they all defeated him together, how Derek took the kill.

“He didn’t want Scott to become the alpha,” Stiles finishes. “Believe me, that would have been a lot worse, I mean, he’s my best friend, but I don’t think he’s alpha material, at least not yet.” He realizes his nerves are making him babble and closes his mouth hard enough that his teeth clack together audibly. He glances at Derek, who’s staring at him as though he could burn holes in Stiles’s skin with his eyes. Stiles shrugs minutely. Truth seemed like the least likely option to get him killed, to get either one of them killed, but it might not be enough.

After a long moment, Moreau turns to Derek. “You’ve been recruiting children to fight your war, why?”

As terrified as Stiles is—and he is; this is as bad as when Peter Hale kidnapped him—a part of him can’t wait to hear Derek questioned by someone he has to answer. No more hiding.

“I’m young,” says Derek, and he looks it right now, even with the stubble, his eyes wide and scared. “I didn’t expect—” he sighs “—I thought they would be easier. Young, strong, and easy to lead.”

“And you didn’t turn this one?” asks Moreau, tilting his head toward Stiles. “He seems a far more worthy choice. Except perhaps for the young man named Boyd, your pack contains fools, weaklings and broken children. Turn this one, and his secrets cannot harm us.”

“He doesn’t want it.” Derek’s eyes flash at Stiles. He isn’t sure what to read in them: hurt, anger. But even if it would save them now, it would be hard to choose this.

“Even with your...convincing?” Moreau puts a prurient spin on the word.

Derek uncrosses his arms and takes a step forward. “My family taught it should be freely chosen,” he says angrily. “Do the elders no longer believe that?”

“The elders believe in protecting our kind above all. We are only as strong as our weakest members,” says Moreau, voice still utterly calm.

“Taking the unwilling makes us weak,” says Derek.

“Do you trust this boy?”

“Yes,” says Derek without hesitating. Whoa, that’s new. 

“And not because you’re besotted?” Moreau asks.

Stiles chokes. Thankfully Moreau and Derek are too focused on each other to look at him. Stiles pulls his legs up under himself on the couch, trying to take up less room. Derek’s not besotted. Derek trusts him, that’s a nice change, but that’s as far as it goes.

“He’s saved my life, more than once. _He’s_ not the one who always wants to go to the hunters for help.” And now Stiles is scared for Scott again. If Derek just threw Scott under the bus…

“It is no bad thing to pit your enemies against each other,” says Moreau. He steeples his fingers. “But it’s true that they are not our allies. Gerard Argent is gone.”

“Yes,” says Derek. “We haven’t been able to find out where.”

“So does that mean you’re not going to kill me?” Stiles asks. Oh shit, he said that out loud.

Moreau turns to him, amused, then back to Derek. He strokes his chin along the hairs at his jaw, making a rasping noise that since Stiles can hear it, probably sets Derek’s teeth on edge. “He may live. If he betrays us, kill him. If you don’t, I’ll kill both of you.”

Stiles gapes at that, but at Derek’s warning look, closes his mouth again. 

“Derek Hale, your pack needs stronger leadership, and Gerard has broken his kind’s code. I will stay until he and all who follow him are destroyed.” He looks around the room. “I will require better accommodations than this.”

“There’s a hotel in town,” says Stiles.

“No,” says Moreau. “I will stay here until a better room is prepared for me. You may go.”

Stiles assumes that just means him, so he gets up and tiptoes out of there, but Derek follows him.

“Don’t—” says Derek.

“I know, don’t tell anyone. Don’t worry about it.” He slaps Derek on the shoulder as he walks past him.  
And of course, Derek grabs his hand.

“You know,” says Stiles, “you could think about trusting me, like you told Moreau you did.” _Since you don’t have a choice,_ he doesn’t add.

“I could—” But Derek can’t even seem to finish the threat. “Fine, I trust you,” he says, sounding unwilling. 

Stiles keeps his fist pump strictly mental. “Where are you sleeping since big daddy werewolf took your couch?”

“I guess I finally have to fix this place up,” says Derek. 

“Now?”

Derek looks around as though he really might get to work with the sander plugged into the outlet in the corner, even though it’s the middle of the night.

“My dad’s working tonight. You could...” Stiles says diffidently. 

Derek doesn’t say anything, but does follow Stiles out to his car. 

“So when Moreau said if I ‘betray you’, what did he mean by that?” Derek looks so concerned that Stiles hastily adds, “Just so I know where the line is, and stay way the hell on the right side of it,” Stiles asks. Derek, weirdly, follows him to the driver’s side.

“Don’t tell anyone who’s not pack about any of our business.” He’s up in Stiles’s personal space again, against the Jeep. Stiles’s body still doesn’t know whether to react to it as a threat or a come on, and so, like it usually does, decides on both. It’s a little uncomfortable, especially knowing that Moreau can probably hear them.

“You know,” says Stiles breathlessly, “there’s a lot of stuff on the internet.”

“Most of it wrong.”

“True enough, but—”

“Don’t tell anyone, especially not Danny, and I won’t have to kill you,” says Derek. Oh, it’s a threat then.

“Why do you have to bring Danny into it?” Stiles asks.

“I know you told him _something_ ,” says Derek. “What was it?”

“Seriously, I didn’t tell him anything.”

Derek sniffs. “You’re lying.”

Stiles sniffs back. Smells like forest and Derek’s warmth. “And you’re creepy. Okay, I told him there was an older guy and things were weird—although I didn’t tell him how fucking weird—and I didn’t know what to do and could he give me advice.”

“What did he say?”

“To stay far away from you, okay? And now you’re coming over to my house because Wolfylocks needs your bed and—where was he even sleeping before this? If he’s doing some kind of werewolf matchmaking thing—never mind, there’s a lot going on, and like 90% of it is freaking me out, okay?”

“I’ll sleep in my car,” says Derek.

Stiles rolls his eyes. “No, you don’t need to do that. Just—what _are_ you going to do?”

Derek looks like he actually might tell Stiles something, until, after working his jaw a few times, he stalks away, at a somewhat dignified speed until he’s under the shadows of the trees, and then he disappears at more werewolfy pace.

“Of course it would be terrible to answer a question. Or talk to anyone,” Stiles calls into the darkness, loud enough Moreau can certainly hear him in addition to Derek. Derek might even show up at Stiles’s bedroom tonight. Which wouldn’t be the worst thing. It’s not like Stiles plans to take Danny’s advice. Danny has no idea. 

The night passes slowly. Stiles alternates trying to sleep with looking up Luke Moreau online. He’s a big deal entertainment lawyer, apparently. Stiles didn’t think of werewolves as having day jobs, but then again, they can’t all have family money and be able to spend all their time doing pull-ups and brooding around charred houses. 

It’s 2am when he finishes the last bout of searches. He’s probably read everything there is to find out about Moreau. It took Stiles a while to find it, because only the police database has the death records. The truth of what happened stayed out of the press. Five years ago Moreau’s two teenage children were killed, found cut in half, in a burnt out car. The pictures were grisly enough they’d probably mess with Stiles’s sleep no matter what. Is it only Gerard Argent who kills that way, or all hunters?

Moreau and his wife divorced after that. Stiles tries to find out what happened to her, because digitally she seems to stop existing after the divorce. Maybe she changed her name back to a maiden name Stiles can’t find on record. Or maybe something else happened.

He lies down and tries to sleep, but he can’t stop replaying the conversation with Moreau. He can’t betray Derek or Derek will kill him. Or Moreau will. Moreau calling Derek “besotted” with him—good SAT word—and Derek not denying it, not exactly.

Moreau’s wrong, of course. Derek finds Stiles annoying, useful and apparently...attractive?

That’s a happy enough thought that he grins dopily for a few minutes before remembering that he’s supposed to be trying to sleep.

He almost drifts off until he thinks about Derek again, probably sleeping somewhere in the forest. Or in his creepy basement. Or in his terrible car. Or possibly waiting outside Stiles’s window. Creepily.

He opens his window and looks out, expecting at any moment for Derek to leap out of the shadows and make him jump out of his skin. When he doesn’t, it’s kind of disappointing.

“Derek,” Stiles stage whispers. “Are you out there? Come on, you can come in.” Ha ha, he’s calling Derek like a stray dog. He wants to find that funny, but it’s actually kind of sad, Derek kicked out of the one little nest he’s made for himself, in the ruin of a house where...his whole family...died. Yeah, _really_ not funny. 

“Please,” says Stiles, again into the dark. If Derek’s not going to be here, he wishes his dad were home, so the house wouldn’t feel so empty. After his mom died, he spent a lot of nights at Scott’s when his dad was out. They only stopped that when Scott started dating Allison.

He’s closing the window when Derek does appear, landing soundlessly on the roof with a predator’s grace. He looks at Stiles, and Stiles, for once, doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even want to say anything. Stiles stands aside and lets Derek climb in the window. He smells like the forest, dark and green.

Stiles opens his mouth to maybe say something, although he doesn’t know what, when Derek takes his shoulders and kisses him, and then—there’s something to be said for wordless communication, sensations only, in the room’s darkness, the silence only broken by the sound of Derek’s mouth on Stiles’s skin. Derek slides blunt, human teeth over pulse points on Stiles’s neck.

He doesn’t stop for anything, taking Stiles’s clothes off before pushing him down on the bed, and sucking him off so amazing and slow that Stiles wants to beg, except that would break the spell of this silence, so instead he digs his fingers into Derek’s shoulder until Derek lets him come.

Then he’s kissing Stiles again, rubbing his dick against Stiles’s hip, touching him all over in a way that Stiles doesn’t understand. He pulls Derek close and keeps Derek’s mouth on his while he jerks Derek off—at least he’s good at that.

He lies next to Derek, still not speaking, although it’s becoming a bit of a strain. Is Derek going to fall asleep? Should Stiles say something? He’s never shared a bed with someone. He rolls over onto his side, facing away. His clothes and Derek’s are scattered over the floor. The wadded up leg of one of his jeans digs into his thigh. He pulls it out and flings it on the floor with the rest.

“So you _can_ be quiet,” says Derek, barely over a whisper. He pulls Stiles close. His skin is warm, and he’s—Derek’s _spooning_ Stiles, which is both weird and awesome. And oddly more intimate than the sex that came before.

“Well,” says Stiles. “Did you like that? Me being quiet?”

Derek doesn’t answer immediately. Add “Things Derek Likes” to the long list of “Things Derek Doesn’t Talk About”. But Derek finally sighs against the back of Stiles’s neck. “Sometimes,” he says. “Not always.”


	6. Chapter 6

Derek’s gone when Stiles wakes to the sound of his dad slamming the front door. Which his dad does sometimes as an efficient way to wake Stiles up. If Stiles is still asleep when his dad gets home from a shift, he’s going to have to bend some traffic laws to get to school on time.

His clothes are in a stack at the end of the bed, folded. If his dad saw that, he’d know someone else had been here. Stiles kicks them off before pulling on something else from the floor and grabbing a piece of his dad’s toast on his way out the door.

He doesn’t remember until he gets to school that without showering, everyone in the pack is going to know what (who!) he was doing last night. That thought makes him feel more smug than worried. With Moreau here, it’s hard to get worked up about a bunch of high school beta wolves.

“Hey, Derek called, there’s a meeting at his house after practice,” Scott tells Stiles during Chem.

“He _called_?” Stiles asks. “He knows how to use a phone?” He doesn’t know whether to be miffed about that or not. When Derek wants to tell him something, he just shows up.

“I guess so,” says Scott.

“Okay, right,” says Stiles. “Did he ask you to invite me, or are you just telling me where you’re going to be? And if it’s the second one, do you think I should just show up, or maybe it’s better if I’m invited?”

Scott gives him a weird look. “What’s with you?”

Stiles makes a face and shrugs. Then, a few seconds later: “But seriously, did he tell you to invite me?”

“I don’t know,” says Scott.

“Think,” says Stiles. 

“I _don’t know_. Are you coming? And why are you freaking out?” In Chemistry today, they’re doing nothing more complicated than calibrating the thermometers by measuring the temperature of boiling water, so it’s not like much can go wrong, but Mr. Harris glares at them anyway.

“I sort of...hooked up with Derek,” says Stiles under his breath. His heart hammers while he waits for Scott to react.

“I know _that_ ,” says Scott. “You keep smelling like him.”

Stiles smacks him on the shoulder after surreptitiously smelling himself. “And you didn’t _say_ anything?”

“Well, Allison said she didn’t think you’d want me prying,” says Scott. 

“Allison knows?” Stiles squeaks.

Scott notes the temperature very carefully in his notebook. Probably he didn’t want to talk about it. Which makes sense.

“So I guess the rest of the pack knows too?” Stiles asks.

Scott nods. 

“Huh,” says Stiles. “That’s probably not good.” That does explain the dirty looks Jackson’s been giving him.

“Yeah,” says Scott a little pointedly. “Anything else I should know?”

It’s totally awesome, Stiles wants to say, except when it’s also weird and crazy. He doesn’t, though. “This new alpha? Moreau? I think he wants to do more than ‘help out.’ That’s probably what the meeting’s about,” he says instead.

***

Stiles gives Scott a ride to Hale house after lacrosse practice. The rest of the pack’s already there, including Boyd, who sits on the stairs and grins at Stiles in a way that’s not at all comforting.

They’re all just milling around, Erica and Isaac leaning on each other like pieces of furniture, when Moreau comes in. Stiles is expecting him, so he doesn’t raise Stiles’s hackles the way he does the others. Stiles can practically feel the temperature in the room drop. So Moreau hasn’t been trying to make friends.

Moreau nods at Derek, and stands partially behind him, in the shadow of the main stairs, an oddly submissive posture for him. Derek exchanges a look with Moreau. They’ve staged this; Moreau’s _agreed_ to this, probably to help Derek save face. He’ll have plenty of time to undermine Derek later if he decides Derek’s not a fit leader.

“You’ve all met Mr. Moreau,” says Derek. “He wants to help us train, but more than that, he has a task for us.” A long pause. “One that is important for our survival.”

“Thank you,” says Moreau, inclining his head in a way that looks mocking to Stiles, but probably doesn’t to the others. He wonders if they can smell or sense anything, or if any more nuanced understanding is swallowed up in the general suspicion of an outsider. Probably so. In Stiles’s experience, werewolves aren’t much for subtlety. 

“An enemy has made Beacon Hills home,” says Moreau. “He killed my family, and I’m here to see justice done. He and those who help him cannot live.”

Uh oh. This must be why Allison isn’t here.

“His name is Gerard Argent. One of you stinks of his family.”

“But—” says Scott.

“He kills our kind,” says Derek, quickly, staring Scott down. “The time has come to deal with him.”

“He’s been gone for a couple months,” says Scott. He rubs at his abdomen, seeming to feel an echo of the stabbing he told Stiles about. “Why do you think he’s coming back?”

“Because of all of you,” says Moreau. “We’re going to be ready for him. We’re going to train to defeat the army he’s building.” He looks at Stiles and smiles in a way that looks perfectly kind and still makes Stiles’s blood run cold. “All except you, Mr. Stilinski. You’re going to find out where he is, when he’s coming back, and who he’s bringing with him.” Stiles opens his mouth to protest, and closes it again when Derek gives him a knife-like glare. “I know you’re up to it.”

***

“I don’t like this,” says Stiles. Scott’s sitting on Stiles’s bed doing homework while Stiles tries to find out what he can about where Gerard might have gone. 

“He cut that omega in _half_ ,” says Scott. “And he stabbed me. A bunch. That wasn’t fun.”

“I’m not getting anywhere with this,” Stiles says after a few minutes, slamming his fist on his desk. There’s no record of where Gerard Argent went in any of the sources he can access. 

“Dude, chill out. It’ll be okay,” says Scott.

“You’re sure you can’t get anything from Allison?” he asks.

“We’re planning to kill her grandfather,” says Scott, like Stiles is stupid. “I don’t think she’ll want to help.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

Scott shrugs. “I don’t love it, but what are we supposed to do?”

“I don’t know. Not kill people? Just let him stay gone?” That’s not an ideal solution either, though. Stiles doesn’t like the idea of Gerard gathering strength somewhere, and coming back to threaten the pack.

“Derek thinks it needs to be done,” says Scott.

“Since when do you go along with everything Derek wants?” Stiles asks.

“Since he’s the pack leader.”

“Well, I don’ t think this _is_ what he wants,” says Stiles, frowning.

“Because he told you?” When you were hooking up, is the implication that Stiles hears, but that doesn’t even matter right now.

And actually, Derek never even told him that. “What do you think of Moreau?” Stiles asks.

Scott shrugs. “He’s helping, right?”

“Come on, Derek told me he’d _kill_ him if he didn’t like how Derek was running the pack. He threatened to kill me. I don’t think we should just be blindly following—”

“Wait, what?”

“Oops?” says Stiles. Derek was definitely keeping that part quiet. But Stiles has been keeping too much from Scott. He explains as much as he can.

“Derek doesn’t think we could fight him? Moreau?” Scott asks. “There’s six of us.”

“No, he doesn’t. And he’s probably right,” says Stiles. He’s thought of it. Strength-wise, Moreau is probably a match for the whole pack together. 

“So we fight Gerard,” says Scott. “It was going to happen anyway. That’s probably what Derek’s thinking.”

“I think we go up against him and a bunch of armed hunters and we get killed. And now I have to find out where he is so we can go ambush him, or we all die. Well, me anyway. Because not doing it probably counts as betrayal.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little dramatic?” 

Stiles just stares at him for a moment, then sighs. “Maybe Gerard will stay gone and I won’t even be able to find anything and this will all be a moot point.”

“Don’t you mean a mute point?”

“No, it’s moot, not mute. Look it up.” 

***

Stiles doesn’t know if it’s good or bad that it no longer freaks him out when Derek appears out of nowhere in his room. Maybe because those moments of fear are now followed by sex. Derek still doesn’t talk much. And he’s very good at appearing late at night when Stiles’s dad isn’t there, and disappearing just as quickly. Between that and the late night research and the using his dad’s connections, Stiles drifts through his classes in a haze and falls asleep in study hall.

“Dude, I’m not carrying your ass on the next lab report,” says Danny when they’re writing it up. He pulls down Stiles’s collar to expose the hickey Derek put there. It felt amazing, but Stiles had a panicky night worrying it might turn him. “You’re still hooking up with that guy,” he says in that calm Danny-voice, but with enough of an edge for Stiles to hear he’s concerned. “You don’t look good.”

“That’s not what Derek says,” says Stiles, sleep deprivation making him snippy. It’s not even true. Derek doesn’t give him compliments besides showing up.

Danny rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I get it. Just…be careful.”

***

Then Stiles gets a break—more from a serendipitously timed snooping trip into his dad’s office than because he’s actually skilled at this stuff. The FBI’s investigating an armed compound in Oregon, owned by the Argent family, and they wanted background from Sheriff Stilinski.

Stiles sits on the information for a couple of days. He doesn’t mean to keep it from Derek that long, but Derek’s been putting all his energy into fixing up another room in his house, and he gets the pack to help with that as well, so no one’s around. 

If things were normal—well, as normal as they’ve been recently—Stiles would have gone over to help as well. There’s something pleasing about seeing homey things emerge from the burnt out shell. Something hopeful.

But he’s not under the pack’s obligation, doesn’t feel whatever pull draws them together. The pull Derek exerts on him is a lot more mundane than that. And this information is dangerous: names, locations, floor plans. Derek and Moreau will look at it and start planning an assault, the murder of Gerard Argent, and the collateral deaths of anyone with him. Stiles knows their names and faces, even some of their stories now. Danny’s the only reason he’s not failing Chemistry, but he could write a fifty-page paper on the Argent’s paramilitary organization. Too bad no one will ever give him course credit for that.

He uses the time he spends deciding what to do with the information to catch up on some schoolwork. He’s almost convinced himself that he’ll keep sitting on the information forever when he climbs into his Jeep after school and finds Derek in the passenger seat.

“Where have you been?” Derek asks.

“Um, school?” says Stiles. 

Derek sniffs him. “What are you hiding?”

Man, werewolves are annoying. Stiles needs some normal friends. “I don’t want you to get my friends killed,” says Stiles, looking straight ahead. Around them the parking lot clears out. A few guys are hanging around a new Range Rover and trying to impress the girl who owns it by telling her things about the horsepower. 

“I could threaten you,” Derek suggests, after taking a few angry breaths. “But—”

“But I don’t really buy it anymore,” says Stiles. Except he would buy it; Derek still frightens him, even after everything. He trusts Derek to save his life, he trusts Derek not to bite him, but he doesn’t trust Derek not to hurt him, not really.

“I was going to say, ‘but I don’t have to.’ Because Moreau will do it for me.”

Yeah, that works as a threat. “Yes, I found something,” says Stiles. “But I want you to keep Scott and the others out of it. This isn’t their fight.”

“It _is_ their fight,” says Derek. “Why don’t you understand that?” He sounds genuinely frustrated. “Drive.”

“This bossiness isn’t your most attractive quality,” Stiles mutters as he puts the Jeep into gear. 

When they get to the Hale house, Derek half-guides, half-shoves him up the steps. “For your own good, don’t lie to him,” says Derek.

“I’m not an idiot,” Stiles grumbles.

“Don’t hide anything either,” says Derek. “He’ll know.”

The house does look better. Moreau’s still staying in the study, but someone’s moved the couch out and replaced it with a double bed with a wine-colored bedspread. Stiles wonders, nonsensically, which of them picked that out. He can’t imagine either one of them in Bed, Bath and Beyond. 

Moreau sits—sprawls, really—in the desk chair, one leg extended. Relaxed, he exudes more power than Derek does when he’s in full-on threat mode. Moreau doesn’t need to threaten—his existence is a threat to everyone he sees as prey.

“Tell him,” says Derek, giving him another shove. Stiles shoots him a dirty look, wishing that Derek had been just a little bit on his side in this. They could have talked, planned a course of action.

“You want to take the fight to Gerard Argent,” says Stiles, trying to keep his voice steady. “Kill him, and I’m guessing, anyone who stands between you and him, right?” Moreau looks amused, and nods. “And you’re going to bring the pack with you?”

“Depends how many we have to fight,” says Moreau. He looks at Stiles as though he can see through skin and bone. 

Stiles tries not to give anything away. He can’t meet Moreau’s eyes, so he looks at the screen of his computer. Moreau didn’t lock it. Half hidden by an email window is a map that looks familiar. Because it’s a map of the land around the Argent compound in Corvalis. 

“You already know,” Stiles says as he recognizes the image. “Why was I busting my ass doing research when you already knew all of this?” The answer occurs to him as soon as he says it. Of course Moreau would have had the resources to get this information himself. Why would he need a high school kid, even a high school kid with access to police databases? “You were testing me. If I was loyal enough to bring it to you.”

“You’re loyal enough to Derek not to want to bring this to me. But I do know,” says Moreau. He pulls up the map and zooms in on it. “I know about the bunker of guns here, with reinforced steel walls. I know about the traps in the woods. What do you know?”

“I know how many there are. FBI thinks there are about ten. And there might be sniper placements.” Moreau actually looks surprised. He gestures for Stiles to show him. This is so fucked up. Why can’t Moreau just let the FBI handle it?

“I can’t be sure,” says Stiles, “but another hunter compound was raided in British Columbia a few years ago. They had snipers in platforms. If the Argents follow the same pattern they’ll be here, here, and here.” He points at trees on the map. It helps that the ATF did investigate the Argent compound in Corvalis a few years ago. They didn’t find anything they could use, but all of the photos were online.

“Good,” says Moreau.

“He’s in another state,” says Stiles. "You’re going to get my friends killed. You’re going to kill people who’ve never—you don’t know if they’ve broken their code or not. Why didn’t you bring your pack up here to do this? Is it because no one else would support you in your little crusade, but you knew you could bully Derek into doing it?”

Stiles hadn’t imagined someone so big could move so fast. Moreau’s holding him up by a fist in his shirt collar before Stiles has a chance to regret mouthing off. His feet scrabble to reach the ground and keep Moreau’s grip from choking him. “My pack would eat Derek’s pack for breakfast,” Moreau growls.

Stiles is going to die. He’s going to die because he couldn’t shut up around a giant alpha werewolf. Everyone always told him his mouth was going to get him in trouble, and now it has, and he really, really doesn’t want to die, and even if talking could help him now, he’s out of words. 

Moreau pulls him up higher, as though he weighs no more than a rag doll. For a moment Stiles thinks it’s going to be okay and Moreau’s going to put him down. Then Moreau roars and throws him toward the wall. Stiles raises his arms to protect his head, but he’s not fast enough. He’s going to break his neck.

And then Derek’s there, leaping up and catching him, twisting his body impossibly so Stiles hits him instead of the wall. Moreau looms over them for a flash, then, with werewolf speed, Derek scoops Stiles up in his arms, like he weighs no more than a child, and runs, carrying Stiles out of the house, tearing through the woods. At first Stiles is too surprised to notice anything except their speed. Then his body realizes that he’s _safe_ and not about to die—unless Derek trips or something—and he goes limp as the adrenaline leaves him. Derek runs without stopping until they’re on Stiles’s street.

“You know my car’s back at the house,” says Stiles when Derek finally seems to realize what he’s doing and put Stiles down.

“You’re such an idiot,” Derek yells at him. “Why can’t you just—”

“You couldn’t have guessed any of that yourself?”

“Of course I did. It doesn’t matter. He’s going to do what he wants. I’m not—” Derek balls his hands into fists “—I’m not strong enough.”

“Maybe strength isn’t the point—you think of that?”

“Strength is—”

“And maybe if you told me what was going on—”

“I was protecting you.” He stares at Stiles, jaw set hard.

“That’s not good enough. You have to tell me things.”

Derek doesn’t answer, instead looks at Stiles like he might explode from frustration. Stiles puts his hand on Derek’s shoulder. “We—I’ll figure something out—”

Derek kisses him, desperately, driving all the thoughts out of Stiles’s head for a couple seconds until he realizes that shadows or not, someone could turn on a light at any minute and see them.

“Come on, we gotta...,” he says, and Derek follows him up the stairs into the house. His dad will be home at 9 tonight, and Stiles is supposed to make dinner, but there’s still plenty of time if he just heats up a frozen casserole or something.

Derek’s still being weird and monosyllabic—which is not actually that weird for him--but it is weird, even for him, that he undresses Stiles slowly, and touches his skin, especially where the bruises from Moreau’s grip are sore and throbbing.

“You’re too fragile,” Derek says, sounding like he’s talking more to himself than Stiles. “I wish...”

Stiles sighs. Derek wishes Stiles were a wolf too. But if he were, would it be like this, or would he just be pack, someone Derek needs to push around? Even more than he does now? Would Stiles have seen any of the cracks Derek let him see? 

Derek’s murmuring things against his skin. Things like “mine” and “want to” and it’s freaking Stiles out more than usual. This isn’t flattering; it’s terrifying. A giant werewolf almost killed him today, at least partially because Derek just takes what he wants, and never tells Stiles anything.

But Derek’s tongue swipes around the head of Stiles dick and maybe he doesn’t care about that just this minute. Derek’s finger nudges his cheeks apart, finding sensitive skin, and it does feel amazing, but it’s too much, too fast. This should be some kind of thank-god-we’re-not-dead-sex, and maybe that’s what it is to Derek but it’s starting to feel like this-might-kill-me sex.

Derek looks up at him, questioning. Stiles wants to be someone who can be there for him, give him what he needs, but that seems like an endless task, something that will swallow him whole. Something in his chest freezes. He feels selfish and scared when he says, “No.”

Then louder, “No, Derek. I don’t want this. You’re scaring me.” Derek’s scared him a million times, why should this be different? It is, though. “I can’t deal with this,” says Stiles, trying to sound as calm as possible, but his voice rises on the words, and for the first time in years it feels like he might have a panic attack. “I’m sixteen and this is yet another secret I have to keep from my dad and I can’t deal with it. I just can’t.”

“Stiles, I…,” says Derek. 

“You want things, and I just—you should go.” It’s not until Stiles falls silent that he realizes he backed away from Derek on the bed. He’s pressed up against the wall at the top, with a sheet clutched to him, while Derek kneels at the foot, looking like someone just punched him in the stomach.

“You mean that?” Derek asks.

Stiles wants not to mean it; he wants to tell Derek it’s okay somehow. Then when he moves, his neck hurts, bruised by Moreau flinging him across the room, which wouldn’t have happened if Derek hadn’t brought him there. He thinks about what Danny said and all the times Derek’s kept things from him and made him feel scared and uncertain. “You and Moreau are going to sacrifice your pack, _my friends_. I can’t just forget about that—about, god, _Jackson_ —because you’re hot. I have to look out for them. What are you even doing here anyway?”

Derek gives him a baleful look, and Stiles remembers what Moreau said about betraying him. Derek looks betrayed. “You don’t know that?” Derek whispers.

“No, because you don’t tell me anything. Or anyone else.” Downstairs, his dad turns a key in the lock. He’s early, or Stiles is late, and his dad won’t have dinner, all because Stiles has been too wrapped up in wolfy stuff. In Derek. “I gotta...,” he says.

Derek gives him one last look and jumps out the window.

Stiles pulls his clothes on and goes downstairs. His dad’s looking around at the cold kitchen, hands on his hips. “Stiles, I’m disappointed.” He turns to face Stiles. At least some of what just happened must be showing on Stiles’s face, though, because his dad suddenly looks worried. “What’s wrong? Did something happen to you?”

Yeah, boyfriend trouble, Stiles wants to say. He’ll probably have to tell his dad he’s bi at some point, although maybe not when he’s dating—hooking up with—whatever—occasional fugitive and person-of-interest Derek Hale. Well, he’s probably not now.

“Yeah, personal stuff,” says Stiles. “Nothing you need to worry about, I swear.” Because any violence is going to happen across state lines. 

Wow, it sucks to have to split hairs like that. But at least it’s not going to endanger his dad. That’s something. “Sorry about dinner. I can still defrost one of the casseroles we made last month. And there’s some chips.”

“Don’t worry about it,” says his dad, brow still furrowed. “You sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

“Yeah, Dad, really sure.”

“You know you’re not allowed to have girls over when I’m not home, unless I’ve met them? And unless they’re really here for studying?”

“Yep,” says Stiles, feeling badly about that too. There’s no way his dad would approve of Derek being here.

He stays up late watching TV with his dad and studying for the math test tomorrow until he’s falls asleep on the couch. His dad wakes him up at midnight to move to his own bed. Then every time he closes his eyes he sees Derek’s face before he left. He was hurt, and Stiles did that. Even after the hooking up, even after Moreau called him besotted, Stiles had never suspected he had the power to do that. He thought it would feel good to have someone care about him like that—especially if it turned out to be Lydia—but it turns out it actually feels like crap. And it doesn’t mean he’s close to Derek or understands him or anything, all it means is that he hurt him. No, there’s nothing good about that.


	7. Chapter 7

And it doesn’t get any easier the next day at school when everyone in the pack is glaring daggers at him. Even Scott glares at him until Stiles hits him on the shoulder. “What?”

“Oh, sorry man. Just, Derek’s pretty upset, and the rest of us can kind of feel it. I’m sure you had a good reason.” For breaking his heart, Scott’s glare adds for him.

“Oh please,” says Stiles. “I did have a good reason. And I didn’t—” _break his heart_. That’s totally ridiculous.

But Stiles still catches Scott looking daggers at him when he thinks Stiles isn’t looking. “Would you please give it a rest?” Stiles asks, and Scott looks apologetic again.

“Look, I don’t really want to hear about it, but if you want to talk about it...?”

“Excellent comforting. That was top notch,” says Stiles. He’s not telling Scott about it, no way. “Don’t you think it’s a little creepy? He’s like, 23 right?”

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about it,” says Scott.

“I don’t,” Stiles answers. He really doesn’t. Scott will probably find it hard to sympathize with the stupid stuff Stiles has done because Derek is hot. Hell, he was barely sympathetic about Stiles’s crush on Lydia, but at least until Allison showed up, they’d been able to agree she was the prettiest girl in school. Derek—Scott probably hasn’t ever seen him that way.

***

“Did you really bring up your age difference when you broke up with him?” Allison asks, falling into step with Stiles between classes.

Stiles flails and stops walking. “So I guess you’re talking with Scott again in school?” he asks.

“Emergency situation.” Allison puts her arm through his. “He didn’t think you were in any state to carry messages. Also he’s kind of mad at you.”

“For god’s sake. It’s not my fault that Derek’s getting his emotions all over everybody.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just be glad he’s keeping Isaac and Erica off you. They actually want to kill you.”

“I miss living in a world where that would be hyperbole,” says Stiles, sighing. The halls are clearing out. They both have study hall next, and Mrs. Smythe won’t care if they’re late, not with Stiles’s stack of forged library passes.

“So, spill, was it the age difference?” Allison asks after they settle into the nook under the stairs. She folds her long legs under her.

“This is the weirdest day of my entire life, and that’s saying something,” says Stiles, leaning back against the wall. And, because it’s nice to tell someone who doesn’t want to kill him and who knows most of what’s going on, eventually he tells Allison as much as he can. He leaves her grandfather out of it. He tries to leaves out as much of the sex as he can too, but she’s much more understanding of the desire to be up close and personal with Derek Hale than Scott is. 

“We weren’t actually dating,” he finishes.

“Was it good?” she asks, grinning at him.

“Uh, yeah. Not that I have much basis for comparison. But yeah.”

She smiles at that and ducks her head, then starts worrying at her thumbnail with her teeth. “I don’t know if I should tell you this, but I found Aunt Kate’s diary. Did you know that she and Derek used to—when he was sixteen?” 

Stiles shakes his head. This is none of his business, but—breaking up with Derek doesn’t mean Stiles has stopped obsessing about him.

“She was…older,” Allison continues. “She got him to tell her everything about the Hales. And then she burned his family alive. I don’t know if it makes a difference, but I thought you should know.”

“Oh shit,” says Stiles. He pulls his arms on his knees and hides his face. It feels like someone kicked him in the stomach. 

“I’m sorry,” says Allison, touching his shoulder. “I shouldn’t have—I don’t know. You’re right, he’s a lot older than you.” 

It makes a huge difference in some ways, but in other ways none at all. Is it better or worse that Derek was echoing what was done to him?

Allison puts her hand on his arm. “That’s gotta be—” she sighs “—I don’t even know. How do you feel about him, really?”

That’s not something Stiles talked about when he told her what had happened. He doesn’t know. Derek’s…Derek. He’s broken and beautiful and frustrating and terrifying. “Jackson…,” Stiles begins.

“Forget about Jackson,” says Allison. She looks at him seriously. “That’s an excuse. Derek’s not making the pack miserable because of Jackson.”

“Danny was right,” says Stiles, trying to sound decisive. “He told me to stay away from Derek, and that’s what I should have done.”

***

Thankfully, Scott gets over it about a day later, or at least gets better at controlling his reactions. “I just don’t get what he’s so upset about,” says Scott.

“Thanks,” Stiles answers, sarcastically. They’re riding the bench in practice while a fine rain drizzles on them. At least the heat wave has passed, but the rain makes all the lacrosse gear stink. 

Boyd has pretty much taken over for Scott and Jackson on the field. No one can stand against him. Jackson’s stopped being nasty to Scott in favor of shooting Boyd dirty looks. He doesn’t go further than that, though—now that the pack’s training together, and broken bones can heal in a couple minutes, Jackson’s smart enough to know that being rude to Boyd isn’t going to be pleasant for him.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” says Scott. “I’m sure you were a great boyfriend.”

“That’s just the problem, I wasn’t—oh, never mind. So has he said anything—” Scott gives him a pained look “—not about me. About Moreau? About what’s going on?”

“No, I think they’re still working on strategy,” says Scott.

“And you’re willing to go up to Oregon to kill Gerard.”

“We still say we could fight Moreau,” says Scott. They wrangle about that a little bit, but eventually Scott admits that Moreau is incredibly strong and his ability to read the wolves almost amounts to mind-reading. It probably wouldn’t work.

Stiles broods about that, and about Derek, for a couple days. It’s one thing when nasty creatures are trying to kill them and the werewolves are the only things that can stop it. This feels different. This is marching into death, with death driving them on. It’s slow motion suicide, and it makes Stiles sick to think about.

Brooding turns out to be more boring than Derek makes it look and gives him plenty of time to catch up on his schoolwork. He even writes up the final chemistry project for the year to make it up to Danny.

“That guy hasn’t been hanging around the way he used to, huh?” Danny asks when they’re doing the last edits.

Stiles thought he’d been imagining it, the way he thought he’d catch Derek out of the corner of his eye, or could sense he was there, even if he never saw him. But he hasn’t lately. Even though he kind of wants to.

“Yeah, maybe he’s gotten a new hobby other than creeping on teenagers,” says Stiles. At Danny’s expression, he adds, “That was a joke.”

“It’s funny ‘cause it’s true,” Danny answers. 

“I thought you didn’t want to hear about it,” says Stiles with a sigh. He’s never had so many people interested in his business before. 

“You’re right. I don’t. Unless—”

“I’m fine,” says Stiles flatly. “Let’s finish this.”

Derek really hasn’t been around though, and maybe he _has_ given up stalking high school students, or maybe he’s just not stalking Stiles. Or he’s working out some plan with Moreau to bring the pack up to Oregon and use them as canon-fodder.

Stiles finds Erica in the cafeteria the next day at lunch. She growls a little at him, which shouldn’t be as sexy as it is, but she really works it. Why does he have to find dangerous, impossible people so attractive?

Isaac slouches over his tater tots, still trying to look dangerous, but that’s a difficult thing to do while eating bite-sized potato deliciousness. Stiles doubts even Derek could do it, and Derek’s a lot better at looking dangerous than Isaac.

“What’s the plan, guys?” he says, sliding into the bench next to Isaac and stealing one of Isaac’s tater tots. _Stiles_ doesn’t have to worry about looking dangerous.

“Go away,” says Isaac.

“Are you still mad at me on Derek’s behalf? Because I’m pretty sure he can take care of himself.” Actually, Stiles isn’t at all sure, but Erica and Isaac don’t need to know that and anyway, they’ve bought the big bad alpha thing.

“What. Do. You. Want?” says Erica, tapping her fingernails on the table between each word. Stiles watches, then tears his eyes away and looks back at her face, skipping the danger area in between.

“I know Moreau and Derek are planning something. A road trip? Ringing any bells? No?” He takes another one of Isaac’s tater tots, jumps back when Isaac snarls at him, and then smiles blandly while eating it.

“What do you know about it?” Erica asks.

“So you do know. Tell Derek I’ve thought of a better way to do it. Don’t tell Moreau.”

“Do what?” Isaac asks.

“Do what he’s planning. Oh, you don’t know, do you?” He gets up and backs away while Erica and Isaac give him murderous looks. They wouldn’t do anything in the middle of a cafeteria. Probably. 

Shit, now he has to come up with an idea.

***

He doesn’t have long either, because when the doorbell rings that night and his dad answers it, it’s Isaac and Erica. “Some friends here for you,” says he says. “Not sure how I feel about you hanging out with that Lahey kid.”

“He was cleared,” says Stiles. 

“Not enough evidence to prosecute is not the same as not doing it,” his dad reminds him. Stiles goes to the door. Erica and Isaac are somehow wearing even more leather than they were in school. 

“Derek wants to talk to you,” says Erica.

And he sent the leather twins to get him. Stiles can’t decide what that means. He wishes it were Derek at his door, no matter how hurt or angry he’d probably look.

Erica and Isaac pile into the Jeep. “He’s at the old hideout,” says Isaac. Which means the abandoned railyard, it turns out. Derek must love this place; it’s all decrepit and falling apart.

“I can walk, sheesh,” says Stiles, as Erica and Isaac drag him in.

Derek steps out of the shadows. “You have an idea?”

“Is Moreau here?” Stiles asks.

“No,” says Boyd, stepping out of another pool of shadows. Derek must be giving them lessons in skulking.

“I do have a plan,” says Stiles. Wow, he’s nervous. “Do you want everyone to hear it?”

Derek flashes him a look that’s both angry and conspiratorial. No, of course he doesn’t want the pack to hear it. Because he might like the plan, he might not like the plan, a million reasons. Derek hesitates. It seems like a while, but maybe it’s only a breath, because when he says, “Leave us,” the pack scatters. 

“Are they really gone?” Stiles asks. If he keeps this all business, he won’t notice how Derek looks even more tightly wound than when Stiles saw him last. He smiled occasionally when they were together; now it looks like if he did, his face would crack in half.

“Yes,” says Derek. Stiles looks at him for a moment. Derek rolls his eyes. “I can hear and smell better than they can. They’re gone.”

“Do you need Gerard Argent dead?” Stiles asks.

“What?” Derek walks in a little circle, not looking at Stiles. “I thought you had a plan.”

“I do,” says Stiles, although it’s still just a fraction of a plan. He needs someone to help him work it out. “But it all depends--does he have to die? What if he were arrested instead?”

“Moreau could probably still have him killed in prison, if he wanted to,” says Derek. 

Okay, that’s disturbing. “Not the point,” says Stiles. “If we—if everyone goes up to Oregon, guns blazing—um, metaphorically—people are going to die. Your people. My friends. And if I—if someone calls the police while you’re there, that’s just more chance of your—of our people getting hurt. But the FBI really wants to get in there, and if they do, I bet they’ll find enough guns to arrest Gerard. If he’s arrested—well, he’s probably not going to have a shoot-out with the cops and if he does—”

“They’re in another state. It won’t be your dad,” says Derek, almost gently.

“Yeah,” says Stiles, glancing up at Derek. His face is mostly hidden in the shadows.

“So what’s the plan?” Derek asks.

“Kidnapping across state lines is a big deal, right?” Stiles licks his lips. This is going to sound stupid. “So, what if we made it look like one of your pack was kidnapped? Blood on a knife.” He swallows. “Scared parents.”

Derek nods.

“Allison can probably get a knife or something else that belongs to Gerard.”

“Allison Argent?” Derek asks.

“Yes,” says Stiles firmly. “Scott trusts her. I wouldn’t trust her to help you kill her grandfather, but after he waved a knife around in Scott’s stomach, sliced a man in half, and bad-touched her in the principal’s office, I think she’d be willing to get him arrested.” Derek’s silent. “Well? Is it worth a try? Please tell me it is, ‘cause this is all I got.”

Derek gives Stiles a look he can’t read. “Whose blood?” he asks.

Whose parents get to be terrified? Whose family will kick up a big enough stink to get the FBI called in? “Jackson’s parents would totally freak out, but I don’t think he’d do it. Isaac doesn’t have parents. I don’t know what’s with Boyd, but—”

“Erica’s probably the best choice,” says Boyd, from somewhere behind Stiles.

“You were supposed give us some privacy,” says Derek, testily.

Boyd grins, teeth white in the darkness. “Once I figured you weren’t hooking up or anything, I came back. My mom’s not around and my dad wouldn’t go to the cops. It could be Erica.” He looks at Stiles. “Or it could be you.”

“No!” Derek and Stiles say simultaneously. Derek looks at him sheepishly then puts back on his usual glower. “I haven’t decided if we’re even going to do this.”

“It’s a good idea,” says Boyd. “And I’m not joining Moreau’s little revenge army and getting myself killed, but Gerard Argent needs to be stopped. When do we leave?”

“I haven’t agreed to this yet,” says Derek. A little pouty, if you ask Stiles. It’s not going to give him leadership cred, but maybe he worries about that less with Boyd.

“It’s a good idea,” says Boyd, this time looking at Derek only. “You should talk to Erica.”

***

Derek calls Jackson and Stiles calls Scott, who brings Allison, and they all at gather in the bus depot. Jackson rolls his eyes about a million times as he walks in.

“I’m not doing it,” Jackson says when Stiles outlines the plan again for everyone.

“I could make you,” says Derek.

Stiles hates the way his heart beats faster hearing the threat. He enjoys the way Derek seems to grow bigger as he stalks toward Jackson, how Jackson’s eyes widen as he stumbles a step back. Yeah, Derek _should_ make Jackson.

“No, I’ll do it,” says Erica. “My mom could use the scare.” 

“Healthy,” says Stiles, but no one pays attention. Derek takes a step back. Jackson’s smug expression returns.

“I don’t know about this,” says Allison. She looks frightened. Stiles can’t blame her. If he—well, none of his grandparents are alive, but if they were, no matter what they did, he’d probably want to keep his granddad out of jail. 

“But can you do it?” Scott asks. They look just at each other, as though no one else exists.

She nods, once, then again. Stiles lets out the breath he was holding. “He gave me a knife,” she says.

“Get it,” says Stiles. “Wear gloves or something. We need his fingerprints on it.”

“You’re okay with this?” Allison asks Erica. 

Erica tosses her hair. “Of course,” she says. She looks a little scared, though. 

“As soon as it’s done, we’ll start north,” says Derek. “We can’t be here. As soon as this happens Moreau’s going to know something’s wrong. This needs to happen too fast for him to react.”

***

As luck would have it, Erica’s mom is out on a date that night, so she and Derek plant the evidence, and leave some blood. Derek drags Stiles along, looking like he’d rather have a root canal, and makes him pass judgment on their setting of the scene.

Stiles kicks in a window because he wants to kick something. He shouldn’t be annoyed, because this is working, but it still seems really fucking dangerous, and he just wants Moreau gone and he doesn’t want Derek glowering and glaring at him unless it’s right before kissing him. It was a lot better when that was happening, and the fact that it’s Stiles fault it doesn’t happen anymore just means that’s one more thing for him to blame himself for.

They leave soon after. It’s a Friday night before Stiles’s dad has a weekend shift. Stiles texts him to say he’s staying at Scott’s. Scott uses the same excuse, and they’re free for a while.

The drive up to Corvalis takes five hours. Stiles has Erica’s phone in the car with him, for the police to track their movements. His plan is to ditch it once they cross into Oregon. The FBI can handle it from there, and Gerard would probably be smart enough to take it off her and turn it off. He would probably also be smarter than to leave a blood-covered knife. The plan seems worse the further they get from Beacon Hills.

They find the Argent compound access road outside Corvallis, in the middle of the woods. Stiles has a police band radio he’s been keeping on. Stiles’s dad calls him up when they’re near the place.

“Stiles, didn’t you see Erica Reyes last night?” he asks.

Oh fuck, that was a stupid thing to forget. “Yeah Dad,” says Stiles as calmly as she could. “We hung out for a little bit and then I went over to Scott’s. What’s up?”

“What time did you leave her?” his dad asks.

“What’s going on, dad, is she okay?” Stiles asks. “She was fine when she went home at—” he tries to remember when they put her blood on the knife “—nine, I think.”

“Okay,” says his dad. “Where are you?”

“Just chilling,” says Stiles.

“That’s not an answer.”

“Still hanging out with Scott.”

His dad pauses like he’d like to ask Stiles more but then he sighs. “Your friend Erica is missing,” he says. “You call me if you hear from her, okay?”

“Sure thing,” says Stiles. “Love you.” He hangs up. “Well, I guess it’s working,” he says. 

“Right,” says Scott. “I’ll text Derek and let him know.”

***

They find a sheltered pull-off on the road leading up to the Argent compound where the cars can stay hidden. According to the maps Stiles has on his laptop, this is still park land, so they shouldn’t be too suspicious even if someone does stumble upon them.

“You stay with the cars,” Derek tells him. “Scott, you stay with Stiles.”

No argument there—the Argents like to set traps, and Scott hasn’t proven himself adept at avoiding those. Plus, Stiles wants a little protection. Derek and the other wolves fan out into the trees, even Jackson taking direction without argument. 

It’s horrible just waiting in the forest. Stiles climbs up on the crossbar of the Jeep to get a better view of the road leading to the compound. Scott shushes him.

“What, can you hear something?” says Stiles.

“Yeah, that,” says Scott, as sirens in the distance become cars rushing by them, plain vehicles with lights stuck hastily on top, followed by a Beacon Hills sheriff car with Stiles’s dad and Chris Argent in the passenger seat.

Shit, his dad was supposed to stay out of this. Now he’s driving up to a bunch of armed lunatics, with another armed lunatic in the car. Stiles jumps into the drivers’ seat of his Jeep and is about to start the engine when Scott closes his hand around the ignition.

“Derek told us to stay here,” says Scott.

“Derek didn’t know my dad was going to be here. I’m going.”

“What, you’re just going to drive up there? What then?” Scott asks.

“I don’t know,” says Stiles. “I’ll figure it out when I get there.”

Scott takes a deep breath. “I can’t let you do this.”

“Why, just because Derek told you not to?” says Stiles, which is fighting dirty, but he doesn’t care right now.

“No, because it’s a bad idea. Your dad’s probably here to—consult or something. They’re just going to arrest Gerard. It will be okay.”

Scott’s actually potentially right, but that still doesn’t mean Stiles is staying here. “I can’t just let him go in there. Derek—the pack needs to know he’s here. And Allison’s dad is here.”

“Okay, fine,” says Scott. “But not by car. We go on foot. It’s easier to hide that way.”

Scott leads them through the woods—he’s gotten good at this over the past few months—and into a thicket of thorn bushes that hides them completely, while giving them a view of the gate to the compound. Chris and Stiles’s dad and a whole bunch of agents stand out front, yelling at each other.

“That’s my father in there,” Chris is saying. “And you’re about to go in, guns blazing, because of some kids that we know are trouble.”

“He’s stockpiling guns,” says the lead agent. “There’s a knife with his prints and the girl’s blood on it. If that’s not probable cause, I don’t know what is.”

“Those guns are legal,” Chris yells.

“Not all of them,” says the agent. “We’re going in. If you want to talk to your father so he comes out first, fine. That’s for the best.”

Chris Argent takes a deep breath. “You don’t know half of what’s going on in Beacon Hills. The Sheriff’s son and this missing girl are both often seen in the company of Derek Hale—if you were investigating the Argent family, I’m sure you came across the Hale name. The Hales have a vendetta against the Argents, and they’ve been recruiting kids to help. If you go in there and there’s no girl, I swear to God, I will make sure everyone involved in this is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

“If there’s a chance there’s an injured, kidnapped teenage girl in there…” Stiles’s dad begins.

“It’s a set up,” Chris Argent yells. “How can you be so blind—your _son_ is involved in this up to his eyeballs!”

Stiles hears a sort of buzzing in his ears so he barely hears what his dad says next.

“My son—” Sheriff Stilinski begins, then he deflates “—he’s been involved in some stuff, but I refuse to believe he’s involved in a kidnapping across state lines. It’s your father and his guns that are the problem here.”

“If the FBI goes in shooting, someone’s going to end up dead,” says Chris Argent.

“If Gerard lets us search the place, that won’t happen.” Sheriff Stilinski puts a hand on Chris’s shoulder, which he shakes off, but it doesn’t seem to escalate further. “You can go in with an FBI escort,” he says. “If you’re worried.”

“You’d do that?” Chris asks. 

Stiles’s dad shrugs. “It might help.”

Oh, this is bad. If they don’t find Erica in the compound, they’re all going to be in trouble they can’t recover from. That’s his dad, here, with all these guns. This is everything Stiles was trying to prevent.

On the other hand, no one’s shooting yet. If they can get Erica in to be found, there’s hope yet. He says as much to Scott, as quietly as possible. “You gotta find Derek and make this happen,” Stiles tells him.

Stiles waits through a short eternity as Scott sneaks away. He watches his dad get suited up. But the bulletproof vest only covers his torso. There’s a lot of body, and a whole head, in fact, that the vest doesn’t cover.

When Scott returns with Derek and Erica in tow, Stiles nearly jumps out of his skin. He’s not cut out for this watching and waiting. Rushing into danger and bluffing his way through, maybe. Not this. Not watching his dad walk into a compound of armed nut-jobs.

“You came _here_?” Stiles whispers.

Derek doesn’t answer, just looks out at the massing forces. “There’s a shed on the outskirts of the property that they’re not using,” says Stiles. “Maybe she could be found in there. You can bar the door with something?”

Derek nods and looks out at all the agents again looking—yes, that’s the poker face Derek uses to cover for scared. “I won’t let your father get hurt,” he says to Stiles. Stiles looks at him, their eyes meeting for the first time in—well, maybe he’s never just looked at Stiles like this. And Stiles trusts him. He nods.

“I’m sorry,” says Derek to Erica, “this is going to hurt, and it won’t heal quickly. But it will _heal_. That’s the way it has to be.”

She widens her eyes and nods. Derek extends a single claw and slashes her stomach. Stiles has to look away before he throws up. This was his idea. His fault. There’s no guarantee that won’t just be the first injury she gets, not the last.

Her eyes and ears have gone wolf. Derek grips her shoulders. “Get a handle on it. You have to be human when the FBI finds you.”

And what happens if she ends up in a hospital? Will they figure out she’s not human? There’s so much about this plan that Stiles didn’t think through.

Scott and Derek take her, one arm over each shoulder. 

The wait in the thicket seems interminable. The other FBI agents get suited up. They say things into their radios. They fill out paperwork. Stiles jumps at every prickle of sweat that runs over his face.

Then, at some signal Stiles doesn’t see, Sheriff Stilinski and Chris Argent go in, flanked by FBI agents. Stiles doesn’t breathe.

A voice calls out over the loudspeaker. “Derek Hale, we have the girl,” says Gerard Argent’s voice, through the trees. “Tell the FBI agents why she’s here, what you’ve done, and maybe she won’t have to die.”

“Shit, shit, shit, shit,” Stiles mouths. He squeezes his eyes tight but that won’t make it go away, and he has to see what happens. Maybe there will be something, anything he can do. His cover, as long as he stays perfectly still. The approaching phalanx of agents stops to have a conversation in low voices. 

Then they keep walking. Yeah, that makes sense, since Gerard pretty much admitted to having Erica. But why do his dad and Chris Argent have to go in? Isn’t that just marching another hostage into the situation?

At least they don’t have Derek, or any of the others, if they’re making a threat like that. 

Then there’s another long wait. The FBI agents who stayed behind talk into their radios. Stiles wishes for werewolf senses so he could know what was going on, werewolf strength so he could do something. He wishes he’d grown up in another town – one with no Hales, no Argents. No Scott and no Lydia if that’s the sacrifice needed.

And then the shooting starts. Stiles freezes until a bullet, or maybe a really giant bumblebee, comes buzzing through the bush. Then he lies down on the ground and covers his ears. He gives up trying to see anything, do anything except stay low and breathe through the thing that wants to choke off all his air.

Eventually he doesn’t die, and he stops feeling like someone’s squeezing his neck, and the shooting stops. He sits up. 

In a movie you can always tell what’s going on. Even in the news they try to make it clear. This had seemed like a good hiding place before, covered but close. Now it’s like looking down the wrong end of a telescope.

Scott comes limping out of the woods a few interminable minutes later, being helped by a wounded Boyd and a whole Jackson. “We gotta get out of here,” Boyd says, quiet and urgent. “We need to get to the car.”

“I’m not leaving without my dad,” says Stiles.

“Scott’s shot,” says Jackson, giving Stiles a cold look. “Your dad’s the Sheriff. He can take care of himself.”

“What about Der—what about the others?” Stiles asks.

“They can take Derek’s car,” says Scott.

Jackson hauls Stiles through the woods, a lot faster than he’d probably make it himself, while Boyd drags an injured Scott. Boyd half tears the Jeeps’ door off the hinges getting it open so he can lay Scott down across the backseat. “I don’t know what they shot him with,” says Boyd. He looks more worried than Stiles has ever seen. Maybe Derek’s pack actually is coming together.

“It’s not good,” says Scott. “I think it’s one of those wolfbane bullets like Derek got shot with. Can you—?” he looks at Stiles.

“Yeah,” says Stiles, resorting to sarcasm. He’s not nothing else left. “All you have to do is find the same kind of wolfbane and burn it.”

“Allison gave me some,” says Scott. “It’s in my duffle.”

Oh, bless her. He finds a handful of bullets in the top pocket. He has no idea why they think he can make this work—all he did was watch last time when Derek did it. Maybe there’s a spell or something he needs to recite.

“A lighter?” he asks. Boyd pulls one out of his pocket and hands it to Stiles. He tries to break open the arrow’s tip like Derek did with the bullet and only ends up cutting his fingers. He hands it to Boyd, who snaps it between his fingers. Stiles catches the wolfsbane in his palms.

He makes a little pile of it on Jeep’s dash and lights it on fire, then, burning his fingers, puts it on the wound in Scott’s leg.

Scott writhes, digging furrows in the upholstery with his wolf claws, then passes out, just like Derek did. Stiles stumbles a few paces into the woods, catches himself on a tree, and throws up. A lot. He’s too stunned to be grossed out, like this is someone else, retching in the woods, wondering if his dad is alive. A small part of him is just watching himself puke, wondering when he’s going to stop, wondering if that part is going to get back to the rest of him that’s just reacting now. He feels drained, but not at all better when he stumbles back to the car. His father and Derek are still back at the compound and he has no idea what’s going on.

“We should go back,” Stiles says. “You—” he looks at Scott, who’s pale but conscious again, and looks like he might live “—you’re out of the fight, but Jackson and Boyd can still help. We’re going back.”

“What if your dad sees you?” Scott asks. 

“That’s not the most important thing. I’ll come back for you. Come on. I’ll drive.” He marvels at how calm he sounds when he says it, like he isn’t freaking the fuck out so much he shouldn’t be allowed behind the wheel of a car, but no one’s stopping him, and Stiles isn’t going to stop himself.

Boyd and Jackson exchange a look, shrug, and pile into the car. As Stiles approaches the scene, he sees smoke rising from the compound and steps on the gas. He almost cuts off an ambulance that’s headed in the same direction, sirens blaring.

As soon as he gets there he leaps out of the Jeep and goes running toward the agents milling around. “What happened?” he asks.

“Go away, kid,” says one of them. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“My dad’s Sheriff Stilinski, from Beacon Hills, is he here?”

The agent takes pity on him. “They took him to the hospital. Memorial.”

***

Boyd has to drive, because, finally Stiles can’t anymore. He has his head between his knees. If he keeps trying to breathe slowly maybe he won’t have to puke again. Or maybe he’ll go back to that weird state where everything horrible felt just a little removed. That was better.

When they get there Stiles finds out his father’s in surgery—a bullet in a collapsed lung. He’ll be out in a couple hours. Scott hangs around looking helpless while Boyd and Jackson take Stiles’s Jeep to see what’s going on.

Stiles is good at keeping himself occupied in hospitals. He knows where the interesting pamphlets can be found, and that vending machines on different floors sometimes contain a different selection of snacks. But he can’t do any of those things right now. He can’t do anything except rush to the bathroom a few times because he does feel like he’s going to throw up again.

Finally a nurse takes pity on them, or Scott goes to talk to her, and she comes over with some Gatorade for Stiles. She sits by Stiles and makes him drink it in small sips, so Stiles doesn’t feel as physically miserable anymore and he can devote all his energy to being emotionally miserable.

Around midnight the surgeon comes out to talk to Stiles. Scott’s curled up in a surprisingly small ball in one of the chairs, snoring. He wakes when Stiles stands. The surgeon says Stiles’s dad is going to be okay, but they don’t want to discharge him for a couple days. He’s not out of the woods yet—there’s always the possibility of a hospital-borne infection—but Stiles still almost collapses from relief when the doctor says Stiles can go into see him.

He looks terrible, all gray and ashy. Bandages cover the top of his torso. Stiles looks at them and feels, for a moment, in his own chest, the places where the surgeon showed him the bullets entered. 

Still, it seems like a good sign that his eyes are open, and he can look annoyed at Stiles. “What time is it?” his dad asks. “How did you get here so fast?”

“I came when I found out…,” says Stiles lamely.

“You really shouldn’t listen to my radio. You followed as soon as you found out the Reyes girl was in trouble, didn’t you?” he asks.

Stiles nods, feeling shamefully grateful that his father cooked up a good excuse for Stiles being here so Stiles wouldn’t have to. His father shakes his head. “I’m glad this was me and not you, then,” he says to Stiles. “You can’t keep doing this, but thanks for being here.”

“What happened, dad?” Stiles asks, as if there’s something his dad can say to absolve him of this.

“I don’t remember much after the firefight. I went down pretty fast. One of the Gerard Argent’s men started using me as a shield, and I think that stopped the fighting for a while. I don’t know. I was in and out.”

“How did you get out?” Stiles asks.

His dad yawns and winces. “You know, that was weird. Someone carried me out. I think it was Derek Hale.” 

Stiles must tense visibly, because his dad looks at him sharply. “Really?” Stiles asks, trying to sound bland about it. “Did you get a good look at him?”

“I wouldn’t swear to it in court,” he says, “but yeah. How’s he involved in this?”

“Uh,” says Stiles. “Maybe he was trying to find Erica?”

But his dad nods off and doesn’t hear Stiles’s lame explanation. Stiles settles in one of the hospital chairs. Sleep comes quickly this time, thankfully dream-free. He hardly knows any time has gone by when Scott wakes him by shaking his shoulder.

“Have you heard from Derek?” Scott asks.

“No,” says Stiles. That’s another gut twist of guilt. He’s been worried about his dad while Derek might be out there somewhere, dead. He checks his phone. No messages.

“He’s in trouble,” says Scott, looking as worried as Stiles has ever seen him when it doesn’t have to do directly with Allison. That werewolf bonding thing must really work. “I can tell he’s in trouble, I just can’t figure out where he is.”

“What happened?” Stiles asks.

“Near as I can tell, after they got Gerard, there were still some holdouts with Erica. Derek got her out, somehow, but I’m not sure if the FBI got all the hunters, and all I know is that Derek’s in danger and I don’t know where he is.”

Stiles looks at the faces of the pack arrayed around Scott. They can all feel it, can’t they? They look like Stiles feels inside. 

“I can’t leave my dad,” says Stiles. Because when you leave is when things go wrong.

“Stiles,” says Scott. “You have to. He’s _pack_. He got your dad out.”

“What can _I_ do?” Stiles asks.

“You can be there,” says Scott.

***

He drives, feeling even more like a horrible person, as the pack exchanges terse words and tells Stiles where to turn. He doesn’t want Derek to die, but he isn’t feeling it like they are. Any energy he has left is still worrying about his dad back at the hospital. The whole problem of Derek is just something too big to think about.

They end up in the woods north of the compound, just outside the FBI’s perimeters, the fence of lights they’ve put up. Scott finds Derek in a hollow, wrapped around Erica. She raises her head and opens her eyes when Scott comes closer. Derek doesn’t move. 

Stiles stands back while Scott runs over to Derek and lifts the coat covering his body. Suddenly Stiles feels sick. Again. Derek could be dead and it would be his fault. Derek’s a mess. Stiles is glad that it’s dark and he can’t see all of what’s been done to him. His arm is black with blood and it looks like big chunks of muscle are missing. Scott takes agonizingly long to feel the skin of his neck.

“Is he…?” Stiles asks.

“He’s alive,” says Scott. “We’d feel it if he wasn’t.”

“What can we do?” he asks, desperately. He wants to touch Derek again, to try to feel a pulse, but it looks like any touch would probably hurt him. “What does he need to heal? Can he heal from all this?”

“Moreau says an alpha can heal from almost anything,” says Boyd. “Except wolfsbane.”

“And being cut in half,” says Stiles, but Derek’s still mostly whole. “What does he need?” he asks again.

A shiver goes through the pack, raising wolfy features, extending teeth and claws. Scott pushes him aside, growling, not in an unfriendly way, just like Stiles is in his way, and doesn’t matter here. They arrange themselves in a gentle pile around Derek in a way that would be funny if things weren’t so horrible right now. “A wolf’s stronger with a pack,” says Scott, the words blurred by his wolf teeth. He reaches up. “Come on, you’re pack too.”

“I thought I was just the pet,” says Stiles. Everyone ignores him. He could walk away now. He might lose Scott as a friend, but that doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice right now.

He’s turning to go when he hears Derek make a sound. It’s hardly audible above the sounds of the forest at night, the shiver of pine needles in the night breeze, the noise of small animals, and the slow, measured breathing of the pack itself. Maybe he’s not asking for Stiles, probably he’s not even conscious, but Stiles is there, and even if there’s nothing he can do to help, walking away would hurt everyone’s feelings.

Wordlessly, he joins the pile, taking the space they made for him, curled up against Derek’s chest. It should feel weird, and for a moment it does, but then Stiles feels a touch of something, some feeling from outside himself, maybe a glimpse of what it’s like to be in a pack if you _are_ a wolf. Maybe even something a human can have sometimes—the Hales weren’t all werewolves. It’s a warmth, a shared purpose, in this case, a desperate desire for the same thing.

They sleep there in the woods, although maybe it isn’t quite sleep. It feels like something different, like that lucid moment between sleeping and waking when anything is possible. Even Derek healing.

Stiles wakes with the touch of morning dew. The gray dawn hurts his eyes. And Derek stirs. Stiles sits up. Derek’s shoulder is still streaked with blood, bruised, and weirdly smaller than it should be, but it no longer looks destroyed.

“Thanks for saving my dad,” he says, pulling away. Derek’s not really aware yet, holding him loosely, no hint of his super-human strength. Stiles extracts himself from the embrace. “He’s in the hospital,” says Stiles, although no one can hear him. “I gotta get back to him.”

He leaves them sleeping there. His dad’s awake when he gets back, but too groggy to care that Stiles was gone all night. Some of the FBI agents come by to get his statement, and Stiles listens in.

Gerard and most of the soldiers at the compound were taken into custody, which is good. They can’t find the girl who was kidnapped, which makes it hard to charge them, so there’s all points bulletin out for her. Stiles texts Scott surreptitiously—they should get Erica back to Beacon Hills soon. But there were enough illegal firearms at the compound to get Gerard put away for a couple years. Stiles texts that to Scott too.

 _Is Derek okay?_ , he finally texts, after getting no response to his other texts.

He waits, biting his nails until the response comes. _Yeah. Needs to heal some more. We’re getting a hotel._

That’s good, right? His dad is healing, Derek’s healing, Gerard Argent’s been arrested. He should feel okay with all of this.

 _You should come over and get some sleep,_ Scott texts a half hour later. _He wants you to be here._

Stiles turns off his phone and waits for his dad to wake up again.


	8. Chapter 8

It’s four days before his dad’s okay to go back to Beacon Hills. Someone else from the force has come up to get his car. Stiles drives slowly with his dad in the passenger seat of the Jeep, tipped back as far as it can go because sitting up hurts him. 

Stiles hates seeing him like this, even though he’s supposedly healing well.

Scott comes by after Stiles gets his dad tucked into his bed at home. In fact, his timing is so perfect, he was probably waiting outside and listening, waiting for it to be the right time. 

“How’s he doing?” Scott asks.

“Okay,” Stiles has to admit. He was damn lucky. 

“Why did he go in?” Scott asks, which is a fair question.

“It’s his job,” says Stiles angrily. But it’s not, not up in Oregon. Stiles remembers appointments with a counselor after his mom died, being told it was okay to be angry at her for leaving. He refuses to be angry with his dad now, not when it takes away from the ways he can be angry at himself.

“What’s _wrong_ with you?” Scott asks. “Your plan was great, and everyone’s okay.”

“Except my dad is upstairs recovering from a bullet wound.”

“The Argents did that,” says Scott. “Would it have been better the whole thing had happened in Beacon Hills? I thought that’s what we were trying to prevent?”

Fuck, things are bad if Scott’s the one making sense. Stiles sighs loudly.

Scott shrugs and doesn’t pursue it. “Well, I’m glad he’s okay,” says Scott. “I know you don’t—Moreau’s still here, and some other—I don’t know. I don’t really get why he was here in the first place.”

“Wait, who else is here?” Shit, he doesn’t like the sound of that. He’s been avoiding worrying about anything but his dad, but of course, there’s the reason his dad was up there in the first place.

Scott spreads his hands. “They want to talk to you. To the whole pack.”

“I’m not—”

“Yeah, you _are_ ,” says Scott. “Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“ _You’re_ pack,” says Stiles. “I’m just a fragile human with a fragile human family, and I can’t—my dad’s all I’ve got.”

“I know you don’t want to lose him, but he’s not all you’ve got,” says Scott. “And not everything is about you.”

“This seems a little bit about me,” says Stiles, affronted. Scott doesn’t talk to him like that. Scott is self-absorbed and happy-go-lucky and lets Stiles boss him around. The way it should be.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” says Scott. “You just need to—look, this is good, okay. I don’t think Moreau’s going to be a problem anymore. And you did that. You should come.”

“I should? I have a choice?” says Stiles, although Scott’s words have mollified him somewhat. 

“Well, not really. Derek said he’d come get you if you didn’t come back with me.”

That seems like a sufficient threat, even if not for the reasons it used to be. “Okay,” says Stiles with ill grace. “I’m coming.”

“Can you drive too?” Scott asks.

***

Derek’s waiting on the porch with his arms crossed when Stiles pulls up. His face doesn’t show anything, he just turns and walks into the house, leaving the door open for Scott and Stiles to follow.

Inside is full of wolves, enough to make Stiles’s skin crawl even when they’re all in human form. How does no one else in Beacon Hills know who is walking among them? Arrayed against the west-facing wall, with the light of the setting sun behind them, stand a group of older wolves, none of whom Stiles recognizes. Moreau stands off to the side, looking bemused and somewhat smaller than he seemed when Stiles saw him last.

Of course, Stiles would still run screaming if Moreau so much as snarled at him.

“This is the boy with the plan,” says one of the older wolves, a silver haired woman wearing a gray suit, who looks familiar for reasons Stiles can’t figure out. 

Stiles shoots a look at Scott. So maybe it was about him.

She’s not tall, maybe only an inch taller than Lydia, but something icy and commanding about her makes Stiles think she’s the leader, and this is the council of alphas Derek spoke of. Derek’s wolves perch in their favored places, Isaac three quarters of the way up the stairs, Erica and Boyd in corner’s shadows. Jackson stands with his arms crossed, doing a terrible job of pretending not to be scared. All except Jackson, they look wary and submissive, but not cowed. 

“Yes,” says Stiles. He doesn’t want to be talked about as if he’s not there.

She looks at Moreau. “Is there something about this town that makes wolves lose their judgment?” she asks icily.

“I don’t have much basis for comparison,” says Stiles, although the question wasn’t directed at him. There’s a lot of menace in the air, but it seems directed at Moreau, of all things, not him or any of the pack. That realization makes him feel almost giddy.

“You,” she says to Derek, “seem to be improving as an alpha, but allowing your pack to be used in this way does not speak well for you.”

Derek opens his mouth to protest, then closes it again.

She turns to Moreau. “And you, using a young pack with an inexperienced alpha to pursue a personal vendetta? And I’m sure you implied you spoke for us.”

Moreau also seems about to protest, but then smiles ruefully, like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar who knows he’s done wrong but also imagines he won’t be punished.

“You do not speak for us,” she continues, “and you never will again.” She looks around at all of them. “Luke Moreau is no longer a council member. He does not speak for our law, and he will be watched.” She looks at Derek. “Does that satisfy you?”

Derek nods, looking more relieved than anything else. “Very well,” she says. “We would run with you, but I’d rather get Moreau back home. He’s been away from his clients too long.”

Stiles chokes. She’s the managing director of Moreau’s law firm—Stiles saw her picture when he was researching Moreau. It strikes him as weirdly funny and he starts laughing and turns it into a coughing fit. 

Everyone looks at him. He doesn’t know why he finds the whole werewolves-with-day-jobs thing so funny. Maybe he’s just hysterical. Then the alpha council sweeps out of Derek’s house, with Moreau in their midst.

Moreau turns as he’s leaving and gives Stiles a wink. “Someone tell me why they didn’t decide to kill him?” Stiles says. 

Derek rolls his eyes, then steps into the space that the council occupied a few minutes earlier and addresses the group. “There’s a full moon coming, and we’re going to do this together. If you can control it, you’re helping the others.”

Oh yeah, wolf business. A reminder Stiles is done here. And he realizes he isn’t even curious how they’re going to control it or what role Scott’s going to play. Maybe he left that back in the woods in Oregon. He was already standing near the door, and so he slips out, hating himself for hoping someone, okay, _Derek _will stop him.__

***

Stiles pours himself into his studies when he gets home. It’s finals time, and he’s in danger of losing out to Lydia even in the classes where he usually beats her. He has a study session with Danny the next night for the computer science final. It’s a subject Stiles is better at, but he missed a lot of classes and needs Danny to catch him up.

They’re reviewing sort algorithms when Danny touches his shoulder and Stiles realizes he was staring off into space.

“Hey, I’m sorry about your dad,” says Danny.

“Yeah,” says Stiles. He doesn’t say anything for a minute until he realizes Danny is staring at him. “Thanks, I mean, he’s getting better.” Better enough that he’s driving Stiles crazy. 

“But you’re probably moping about that guy,” says Danny, sounding annoyingly smug.

“No,” Stiles assures him. “I am not moping about him. Look at me. Don’t I have enough things to mope about without that?”

“Yeah, you do,” says Danny, giving him a wry look.

Stiles makes a face. “Let’s study, okay?”

After Danny leaves, Stiles checks on his dad. Mrs. McCall is there, sitting by his dad’s bedside. She’s been coming over to help with a few things and just to keep his dad company sometimes. She’s saying something in a low voice and looks guilty when Stiles comes in. So they were talking about him. Great.

“Hey,” she says to him in that way that adults used to talk to him after his mom died.

“Hi, Mrs. McCall,” he replies firmly. He doesn’t want more sympathy.

“I promised Scott I wouldn’t do this, but whatever’s going on between you guys, I know he’s sorry. It would be a shame to ruin your friendship over—well, I don’t know what it is, but…wow, I’m doing a bad job at this.” She takes a deep breath. “He’s my son and I love him, but I know he can be an idiot. I’m sure he didn’t mean it. He misses you.”

Stiles wasn’t really avoiding Scott, just the pack and wolf stuff, which, he guesses, does amount to avoiding Scott these days. “Thanks, Mrs. McCall,” says Stiles. “Things have just been busy, you know? Finals?”

Mrs. McCall gives him a skeptical look. “He also needs your help studying. You want him to repeat a grade?”

Stiles makes a face. “Nooooo,” he says. She gives him a kiss on the cheek as she’s leaving, another sympathy thing that he doesn’t want.

His dad raises his eyebrows at him. “What’s that about? You and Scott having a fight?”

Stiles shrugs.

“Where’s the hour long monologue about how you’re not having a fight, and what a fight actually entails and maybe the etymology of the word ‘fight’?”

“It’s Old English,” says Stiles. “Germanic roots. Most words that end in ‘-ight’ are. I just thought you knew that already, so I didn’t want to tell you again.”

“Right, Stiles,” says his dad. He looks amused and exasperated, which Stiles counts as a win. He looks at Stiles expectantly until Stiles sits down next to him.

“It’s complicated,” says Stiles finally.

“Is it about a girl?” his dad asks. Stiles presses his lips together. “I’m really bored lying here, can you tell me something?”

“You want me to entertain you with tales of my pathetic personal life?” Stiles asks. 

“Well, when you put it like that—”

“It’s not about a girl,” says Stiles. Even though that’s a good out, even though Scott did kiss Lydia, or Lydia kissed Scott. He rubs his head. It’s time for him to buzz it back again. “Scott’s just—he’s changed a lot. He’s hanging out with different people. And…I don’t think I fit in with them. You know, and that happens. People change.”

“From what Mrs. McCall said, it doesn’t sound like he’s changed that much. Do his new friends not like you? Do they exclude you?” 

“No,” says Stiles. They keep inviting him—Derek and Scott keep inviting him—but that doesn’t mean he belongs. It just means—“I’m really different from them.”

“You’re different from everyone,” says his dad. “Is that such a bad thing? Would you want to be like them? Like _Scott_?” Stiles has to smile at that. “I know Scott,” his dad continues. “He can be thoughtless, but remember how he was there for you when…how he spent the night over here, or you’d go over there? I don’t think either one of us was a picnic to be around then, but he was there. He was just around.”

Stiles nods. It’s as close as his dad ever gets to mentioning his mom, even in passing, and yeah, Scott was around all the time, like a puppy, refusing to let Stiles get him down, refusing to let Stiles be someone who was only sad and angry all the time. Even if he did a lot of that through obliviousness, he did it.

“When someone does something for you, something you need, without you even asking for it, that’s…well, that’s something.” His dad lays his head back on his pillow after he stops talking. He looks tired. Stiles turns to the bedside table to get a pain pill. His dad’s been trying not to take too many, but it looks like he really needs one tonight.

His dad’s asleep when Stiles turns back to him. Stiles leaves the pill and a full glass of water next to the bed. He turns off the light and shuts the door gently.

Yeah, Scott doesn’t deserve—whatever is going on with Stiles right now. He doesn’t deserve to fail all his finals because of it. He probably deserves it because of his chemistry ability, but that’s another story. 

Stiles just, he needs a break. He doesn’t want to see Scott until he figures out how to make everything better, until he stops feeling so fucking guilty about everything. He can’t just go, and look at Derek and enjoy being part of something like the pack when his dad’s injured because of it.

He kneels on a marble while he’s rummaging around under his desk for schoolwork, and it fucking hurts. He sits down on his bed and picks it up. It’s a green cat’s eye shooter, from the full moon night when Derek came to visit. He returns it to the jar with its fellows. He hasn’t set a trap in a while. First because he wanted Derek to come, then because he knew Derek wouldn’t. 

Derek, who rushed into a firefight with wolfsbane bullets to get his dad out. Derek, who wants him at pack meetings, and isn’t even hiding it. Wow, Stiles has been acting like an asshole. Although Derek wanting him hasn’t really been the problem up until now. Everything else was.

Stiles tries to watch some TV, but it can’t hold his attention. He doesn’t know if what he’s feeling is the pull of the pack, or just the pull of knowing he did something wrong that he needs to put right. And Derek deserves better than this.

After pacing around for a while, Stiles checks to see make sure his dad is still sleeping, and gets in his Jeep. He sits in the driver’s seat for a while, trying to psych himself up. He just needs to tell Derek thank you again, when Derek’s conscious. And that won’t solve everything, or anything, really, but at least Stiles won’t be hiding. 

When Stiles arrives, Derek comes out on the porch and crosses his arms over his chest. He’s wearing a gray Henley that looks touchably soft, and Stiles wants to, even if Derek’s whole posture warns him off. His eyes wear an echo of the expression from the night Stiles sent him away, more guarded this time.

“You ran in to get my dad out,” says Stiles. “Why’d you do that?” Shit, he was supposed to just say “thank you”.

“If you don’t know...,” says Derek.

Stiles rolls his eyes. Does he even need to mention the way Derek never tells him anything?

“Fine,” says Derek, “you’re pack. Pack takes care of each other.” He looks tired, like the healing isn’t complete yet. He looks like Stiles has been feeling. The action’s done, but the burden isn’t gone.

“Just pack?” Because that’s not bad, but something about being pack has been bothering Stiles. 

“What do you want, Stiles?” Derek asks. That’s a great question, one he doesn’t have an answer to except that he’d like to stop feeling like shit about everything that’s happened since he kicked Derek out. He misses the sex of course, but he misses more the feeling that he was closer to Derek than the others, more than just pack, more than one of Derek’s broken children. 

Stiles opens his mouth. Usually there’s a torrent of words, just waiting. Some of them stupid, but enough that Derek won’t keep looking at him like that. Nothing comes, though.

“I care about you,” Derek says, his voice accusatory. “You were right though. I shouldn’t have—” he juts his chin out “—you’re too young.”

That is true, or Derek’s too old. But what’s done is done.

“Thanks,” says Stiles, because that is why he came here, and there’s nothing else to be said. “For saving my dad. You didn’t have to. So, thanks.”

He’s about to leave when Derek says, “Jackson. That was just once. I just wanted to—to scare you.”

That shouldn’t make Stiles feel better, but it does. “Okay,” he says. “What now?”

“You’re still pack,” says Derek, fiercely.

“Whatever that means,” says Stiles.

Derek grabs his arm. “How can you say that?”

Oh shit, Stiles is being horrible again. He’s gotten in the habit of pushing people away and it’s—it’s not what he wants to do here. Derek _did_ risk his life for Stiles’s dad. But this isn’t about Derek and what he did, it’s about what Stiles can offer to the pack, besides almost getting them killed on some harebrained plan. “I mean—I’m not…I cause more trouble than…”

Derek’s still holding his arm, glaring at him. “You don’t. And it’s getting annoying telling you that all the time.” He hasn’t been this close to Derek, at least when they were both conscious, since the night he kicked Derek out, hasn’t felt like this, heart beating faster, wondering what Derek’s grip on him means, since earlier than that.

Stiles takes a deep breath. “You don’t—”

“Or maybe no one tells you that enough. You want reassurances, fine. You’re useful. You’re good at this. You’re an asset to the pack and you’re worth protecting. You and your family.”

“I’m sorry…I didn’t mean…,” says Stiles. Useful is great, but it still isn’t enough. An impish impulse takes hold of him. “You could slam me up against a wall to make your point. Then I might get it.”

Derek’s eyes widen. “Would you? Is that what would make you get it?”

Derek still hesitates and Stiles doesn’t know what to say so instead he uses Derek’s grip on him to pull himself closer to Derek, and then kisses him. It’s stupid and Derek isn’t responding and Stiles doesn’t even know why he’s doing it except maybe he does, because being pack _isn’t_ enough. He _liked_ it when he was doing research for the pack, and hooking up with Derek. And he liked that Derek wanted him and that he could do things for the pack that Derek couldn’t.

Then Derek wraps his arms around Stiles and picks him up—which is new and unexpectedly hot—and holds him up against the wall. “Yeah, something like that,” says Stiles.

“You’re still too young,” says Derek.

“I think it’s too late to worry about that,” says Stiles.

Derek gives him a skeptical look. “Really?”

“Yep. Yeah, I think it was too late a while ago.”

“I shouldn’t,” says Derek, “but I want this.” Fuck, that’s hot, Derek admitting to wanting something. To wanting him. He’s been needling Derek to talk to him for so long because it seemed like it would be better for everyone’s safety, but it’s a nice side benefit that it’s so fucking sexy to hear him say it. 

“But,” Derek adds, “It’s more important that you be part of the pack.”

“I don’t want to be part of the pack without this,” says Stiles. He kisses Derek again. It’s fun having the height advantage, even if it’s because Derek’s holding him up. He likes Derek looking up at him.

“That’s, like, blackmail,” says Derek when Stiles comes up for air. He drags his tongue along Stiles’s neck, so it doesn’t seem like he minds that much.

“Yeah, well, I don’t have claws or anything,” says Stiles, “so I gotta use what I have.”


End file.
